Oral Answers to Questions

EDUCATION AND SKILLS

The Secretary of State was asked—

Nursery Education

Shailesh Vara: What meetings Ministers have had with representatives of the nursery sector in the last six months; and if he will make a statement.

Beverley Hughes: Ministerial colleagues and I have held a number of regular meetings with representatives of the early-years and child care sector over the past six months. They have enabled us to highlight the progress that we are making, with the help of the sector, in delivering our commitments in the 10-year child care strategy. Those commitments include establishing, ahead of schedule, the 1,000th Sure Start children's centre, as the Prime Minister announced last week.

Shailesh Vara: I am grateful to the Minister for that response, but does she share my concern that the funding that nurseries receive from the Government does not meet their true costs?

Beverley Hughes: No, I do not share the hon. Gentleman's view about that. In fact, the unprecedented funding that the Government have committed to our youngest children—to early-years education and child care—has enabled the substantial growth in the private and voluntary sector, which is contributing not only to full day care, but to sessional care. Indeed, in his own area, in the 12 months up to the end of 2005, the private and voluntary sector contribution to that market share has risen from 74 to 78 per cent. for provision for three-year-olds. As we continue to extend the free offer to all families, I am sure that we will see that proportion grow, and that is important to us because diversity in the sector is giving parents choice and driving up quality.

Barry Sheerman: Has my right hon. Friend discussed the importance of diagnosing in the early years whether a child needs special educational help? Is she aware that the Select Committee on Education and Skills has done a great deal of work on the issue? Indeed, the recently published special educational needs report links into it. Will she take a message to the Secretary of State for Education and Skills that the Select Committee is deeply disappointed by the response that we have received this week to that important and significant report?

Beverley Hughes: I am sorry that my hon. Friend expresses that view, but I think that he knows that we will debate at length his Select Committee's important report on children with special educational needs.

John Bercow: When?

Beverley Hughes: As soon as the business managers allow us, we will do so.
	It is also important, however, to view the issue in the context of the much wider reforms that the Government are making in children's services, particularly in children's centres and children's trusts, as they are requiring all services to work to together to identify at a much earlier stage the problems that children have and to bring those services to bear around the child and the family in an integrated way, so that their problems are addressed comprehensively and early. That early intervention is very important for children with special educational needs.

Richard Ottaway: Can the Minister explain why popular and high-quality nurseries are not allowed to charge top-up fees? There is a particular demand for that in London and the south-east, where my constituency is located. The principle is established in higher education; why not in nursery education?

Beverley Hughes: Because what we are providing—this is a real dividing line between the Government and the Opposition—is a free entitlement to all three and four-year-olds for 12 and a half hours' provision at the moment, increasing, we hope, to 15 hours and beyond. The hon. Gentleman is asking for that free entitlement to become a subsidy for better-off parents. The private sector could then make higher charges and better-off parents would be simply allowed to use that subsidy. We will not entertain the prospect of discriminating against poorer families. We will not allow the generation of a two-tier system, in which some families can afford a better quality of care, but poorer families cannot. This will remain a free entitlement for all families—

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Roberta Blackman-Woods: Can my right hon. Friend confirm whether it is Government policy to support a mixed economy in the provision of child care services? The £3 billion that the Government put annually into the provision of free places gives necessary choice to parents, particularly those of limited means.

Beverley Hughes: Absolutely. Diversity is really important because it not only gives parents choice, but it also drives up quality throughout the sector. I welcome the opportunity that my hon. Friend has given me to correct some of the myths that are flying around. It is still the case that private and voluntary settings provide 81 per cent. of full day-care places. They provide 90 per cent. of sessional places. So they have the vast majority of market share, both for full day care and for sessional places. That is good; it is what we want to see. Public sector provision is not driving private and voluntary sector providers into the ground—quite the opposite is true. The money that we have put in has allowed that sector to grow, and that is very important.

Maria Miller: We have heard my hon. Friends' concerns about nursery funding in their constituencies and I am sure that the Minister is aware of the facts. The dedicated schools grant that local authorities receive to fund free nursery places is under £4 an hour. Is she aware that the National Day Nurseries Association gives examples of where, throughout the country, the cost of staff and overheads alone is nearer £5 an hour? Her transformation fund sets the hourly cost of child care at almost £6 an hour. Little wonder that a report from Camden council says that 90 per cent. of nurseries—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady has made her point. I know what she is telling the House, so the Minister will know.

Beverley Hughes: It is up to local authorities to allocate the dedicated schools grant, both across the age ranges and for early years, between the sectors. It is right that they have the discretion to do that, because they take account of the market situation and local circumstances. The Government have put an unprecedented amount of money into early years: more than £20 billion since 1997. If the hon. Lady were to stand up to speak again, I would ask her: is her party committed to continuing that funding so that the—

Mr. Speaker: Order. That will do.

Richard Burden: May I welcome, and draw my right hon. Friend's attention to, the new children's centre in Frankley in my constituency, which will be a great asset to a very deprived part of the area, and also the roll-out of the children's centre programme? However, I draw her attention to the fact that it is important, as there is availability of capital, for there not to be an over-preoccupation with the physical structures. The ethos of Sure Start—bringing together integrated services and ensuring real responsiveness to local users—is equally, if not more, important.

Beverley Hughes: I agree with my hon. Friend. As the second phase of Sure Start children's centres proceeds—building on the 1,000 that are in place already and moving to 2,500 over the next two years—the issues that he raises will be important. The key issue is the quality of services for children, to improve their development, but there is also the involvement of parents and the local community in the governance arrangements. We know that by involving parents we are not only doing the best for children, but we are helping those parents—many in disadvantaged situations—to raise their confidence and, through their involvement in children's centres, perhaps to acquire the skills to get into training and work and to improve their quality of life. That is what children's centres are doing throughout the country. I am pleased that my hon. Friend will see further children's centres in his area over the next two years.

Science Degrees

Laurence Robertson: What percentage of students are taking science-based degrees; and if he will make a statement.

Phil Hope: More than 40 per cent. of students are taking science-based subjects. Today, there are well over 130,000 more young people studying for science-related degrees than in 1997-98. Crucial to stimulating demand at higher education level is increasing the numbers choosing to study science in schools. We announced a range of new measures to achieve that in the "Science and Innovation Investment Framework 2004-2014: Next Steps" document that we published last March.

Laurence Robertson: I am grateful to the Minister for that response, but he will be aware that, during the years of this Government, the number of students studying biology and chemistry, in particular, and physics has fallen. Will he assure the House that he will attempt to address that problem, not by dumbing down the teaching of science, as has been reported most recently, but by improving, for example, the access to laboratories in schools and persuading young people that there are worthwhile careers in science to be pursued? In my area, for example, the aerospace industry finds it difficult to recruit science graduates. Will he address that problem, rather than trying to dumb down the subject?

Phil Hope: As I said, there are 130,000 more young people studying for science-related degrees than when we came to power in 1997. In fact, UK universities produce two to three times more science graduates than the OECD average. Our lead on that, overall, has increased. In 2004-05, there was a higher than average increase of 10 per cent. or more in the number of students accepted to study subjects such as maths, physics and chemistry. There is no question of our dumbing down science. The new science GCSEs maintain the breadth, depth and challenge of the current ones. They provide a sound basis for further study of science at A-level and beyond.

Ashok Kumar: Given that the Prime Minister said recently that we are going to have a new generation of nuclear power plants, what are we doing to ensure that we have adequate science graduates to meet the needs of the nuclear industry in the future?

Phil Hope: Some 135,000 students are studying engineering and technology overall, although I do not have the figures for the nuclear industry in particular. However, that represents a good supply of engineers. If the Government were to decide to go ahead with new nuclear power stations—that will obviously be a matter for debate in the House—we would keep the need for additional engineers under review. I might add that Cogent, which is the sector skills council for the nuclear industry, has applied to establish a national skills academy. We will consider that over the next few weeks as a mechanism to ensure that there is an adequate supply of engineers for the industry.

Vincent Cable: How can the proportion of science students increase when the number, let alone the proportion, of pupils taking A-level maths, further maths, physics and chemistry is declining? Do not the Government accept responsibility for the botched curriculum reform that has led to the decline of specialist science teaching in state schools?

Phil Hope: No. Speaking as a former science teacher, I strongly welcome the new key stage 4 science curriculum. I wish that I was teaching it now, but I am fulfilling my educational role at the Dispatch Box by explaining to Opposition Members that which they clearly do not understand. The new science GCSE has the full support of the Royal Society, the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Association for Science Education. If that is not good enough for hon. Members, in today's edition of  The Times, the high mistress and head of science of St. Paul's girls' school writes:
	"we entirely reject the criticisms of Twenty-First Century Science. The approach is challenging, rigorous and, above all, exciting. By linking science to the real world, it embodies the long overdue recognition that science is a dynamic, living subject."
	I am grateful to have had the opportunity to give that lesson to Opposition Members.

Martin Salter: As a former science teacher, the Minister will be blindingly aware that science-based degrees require science-based universities, so will he agree to meet me and a delegation of staff and students from the university of Reading, because its physics department is threatened with closure by the university council, despite the receipt of more than £2.5 million of taxpayers' money last year to establish a centre of excellence for the teaching of physics?

Phil Hope: I cannot comment on a possible closure because no final decision has been taken. My hon. Friend the Minister for Higher Education and Lifelong Learning will be happy to meet such a delegation. It is not up to the Government to micro-manage the university system in such a way. However, through the Higher Education Funding Council, we try to ensure that the number of physics graduates and others is maintained national and regionally so that we have the supply of such graduates into the employment system that our country needs.

Richard Bacon: If the new science GCSEs are working so well, why do the best schools, which produce a disproportionate number of the best results at A-level and a disproportionate number of the science entrants to university, still insist on separate GCSEs for physics, chemistry and biology?

Phil Hope: The difficulty for Conservative Members is understanding what goes on in our education system. Of course, we want those who have the aptitude to take three separate sciences, so we will be encouraging and enabling more of them to do so. However, in addition, we have been providing the new science and additional science GCSEs since September. Conservative Members seem to be contradicting themselves at every opportunity this morning. They wish to portray themselves as champions of the environment on the one hand, but they now want to reject the new opportunity for young people to debate key scientific topics such as global warming as part of the science curriculum. They cannot have it both ways. I suggest that they put their weight behind supporting our hard work—

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Ian Lucas: Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the most successful ways of increasing the number of science graduates is through the foundation-degree route? Rather than simply concentrating on schools, we should be examining good examples of colleges and higher education institutions working with industry. For example, at Airbus in north-east Wales, there is a superb example of a foundation degree working excellently to bring us more science graduates.

Phil Hope: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. When I had the privilege of visiting Airbus a few weeks ago, I met some of the students who were undertaking foundation degrees. Many thousands of people in the work force are taking foundation degrees. The essence of the value of foundation degrees is that they are tailor-made to suit the needs of employers. At higher levels of study—level 4 and above—for employment that provides support to industries in terms of productivity, profitability, innovation, growth and development, foundation degrees are a real platform for people at work to improve their skills for the benefit of themselves, their companies and the country as a whole.

Boris Johnson: In spite of what the Minister says, I think that he would acknowledge that 30 per cent. of university physics departments have closed in the last eight years and the numbers studying chemistry have declined by 17 per cent. in the last 10 years. Against that background and in light of what he said earlier, I hope that he will support our amendment in the Lords which would entitle every pupil to triple science. Does he agree that we will never inspire our children to study physics as long as, in most of our schools, 80 per cent. of those studying physics are taught by someone with a degree not in physics but more likely in biology? Does he agree that the situation is a disgrace and needs to be remedied?

Phil Hope: To return to the real world, the fact is that we want more of our teachers to have degrees in the relevant subjects, and we are introducing a science diploma so that existing teachers can develop a specialism in subjects such as physics—the example the hon. Gentleman gave—to ensure that our young people get the best possible education. It is our investment in science laboratories, in schools across the piece and in the number of teachers that has resulted in the best ever GCSE and A-level results in this country since counting began; and that is despite the opposition from the Conservative party.

Racism

Michael Fabricant: What assessment he has made of the number of racist incidents among students in higher education; and if he will make a statement.

Bill Rammell: We do not make this assessment centrally. We have, however, established robust legal protection against racism and as a result individual universities should have clearly identified procedures in place for dealing with racist incidents. The Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 places a general duty on university governing bodies to promote race equality in their institutions.

Michael Fabricant: The Minister has, I know, read the report of the all-party parliamentary inquiry into anti-Semitism, which talks about systematic racism going on in universities. It refers to a brick being thrown through the window of a Jewish student and a poster bearing the words "Slaughter the Jews" pasted on a Jewish student's front door. This is being done by some extreme Islamic groups. The report's main conclusion is that the response of vice-chancellors is at best patchy. What can the Government do to try to ensure that there is a consistent approach to combating anti-Semitism and all racism in all of our universities?

Bill Rammell: I am aware of the report; I gave evidence to the inquiry. I know that the hon. Gentleman has taken a great interest in these issues. I urge all vice-chancellors to take anti-Semitism and all forms of racism very seriously. The Government have placed strong legal obligations on all public bodies to tackle racism. The work that the equality challenge unit is doing with universities is the best way to spread good practice and tackle the issue.

David Lepper: I welcome my hon. Friend's comments. Does he agree, however, that one of the issues, as I have learned from speaking to students, is a reluctance on the part of some students to report incidents in the first place because they are not convinced that they will be dealt with properly by university authorities?

Bill Rammell: I certainly hope that my hon. Friend's concerns are misplaced. We have to create a climate of confidence, and the report by the all-party inquiry makes an important contribution. It is important that the Government take the lead and make it clear that we expect universities to take these issues very seriously.

Charles Walker: Will the Minister and the House join me in condemning the BNP in Broxbourne who target young people with their racist lies and filth? Will the House also join me in congratulating the young people in my constituency on turning their back on that nonsense and ensuring that we have happy, settled schools in Broxbourne?

Bill Rammell: I wholly agree with the hon. Gentleman. His constituency borders mine. Members of all political parties must challenge the filth and hatred promoted by the BNP. We need to rebut its lies, smears and innuendo, and we need to work at that together. I congratulate the young people who have ignored what the BNP is putting forward.

Educational Attainment

John Robertson: What additional measures his Department has considered in order to reduce the number of school leavers not attaining basic standards of literacy and numeracy.

Alan Johnson: Since 1997, the number of children achieving five or more A* to C GCSEs, including English and mathematics, has increased by almost nine percentage points. We are determined to ensure that every child masters the basics. From this year we will measure the proportion of children achieving five A* to C grades, including English and mathematics. We are investing £990 million in personalised learning to provide more catch-up lessons in English and maths. The key stage 3 curriculum and English and maths GCSEs are being reviewed to emphasise functional skills.

John Robertson: I thank my right hon. Friend for his answer. I welcome the Government's response and the investment that they are making to improve standards of literacy and numeracy, but does he agree that many school leavers do not achieve the basic standards, and that there is still a genuine problem? Even with the Government's best efforts, we have to do more about that. Will he consider carefully what additional help he can give to try to alleviate the problem, and will he consult people in schools to find out exactly what is required to bring such children up to standard?

Alan Johnson: My hon. Friend is right that there is more to do, and I have just described the initiatives that we are introducing. At the heart of the issue there is an expectation of high attainment and absolutely no excuses. If we get the basics right, and if, for instance, we can ensure that children succeed at level 4, that key stage at which they leave primary school with the basics of English and mathematics, everything else in their future education can be built on that platform. All the evidence shows that that is the crucial stage. We have moved from 63 per cent. of pupils reaching that stage in English to 79 per cent. of pupils doing so, but we need to move further. I agree with my hon. Friend that more has to be done, but of course that does not detract from all the excellent work that teachers and head teachers—not politicians—are doing in our schools to bring about the enormous improvements that have taken place in the past nine years.

Sarah Teather: The Government were quick to require schools to teach phonics, but that was only one area highlighted by the Rose report. Why have the Government not addressed other areas, such as speaking and listening skills, which are a foundation for achieving literacy and numeracy?

Alan Johnson: We have concentrated on phonics, but that does not mean that we have ignored the other excellent suggestions in the Rose report. Phonics has received coverage, and the issues that the hon. Lady mentions have not, but they are a crucial part of the foundation stage. Jim Rose and his people are absolutely right to highlight the importance of listening and speaking skills. In addition, the "social and emotional aspects of learning" project is hugely successful, and is being rolled out across primary schools. The teachers to whom I have spoken think that it is long overdue and will bring about a huge improvement in those soft skills that pupils increasingly need in the modern labour environment.

Andrew Selous: Why do we allow children to keep progressing through the school years when they have serious difficulty in reading? Frighteningly high numbers of children in the higher years of our secondary and upper schools cannot read well. The head teachers to whom I speak in my constituency would like the flexibility, within existing budgets, to give intensive remedial reading provision to those children. Why can they not do that?

Alan Johnson: In my reply to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North-West (John Robertson), I said that £990 million is being invested in personalised learning. We have asked Christine Gilbert to produce a report on the subject, which is imminent. The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) is right: we should concentrate on catch-up, and on ensuring that children who do not reach the right standard at level 2 and level 3 receive the kind of attention that they need to reach that key stage at level 4. Some 66 per cent. of children who reach the right standard in English at level 4 aged 11 will go on to obtain five good GCSEs, but only 9 per cent of those who do not reach that standard will do the same. Level 4 is a crucial stage. The hon. Gentleman is right, but that is why I spoke about almost £1 billion going into personalised learning and catch-up, which is crucial to improving results.

John Hayes: Millions of Britons, without the ability to read a story to their children or write a letter, feel cheated. One in three employers send their staff for remedial training to teach them to read, write and count; and even if the Government reach their targets in 2020, 4 million Britons will not have the literacy skills expected of an 11-year-old. With 50,000 school leavers each year functionally illiterate or innumerate, do not the Government realise that they must tackle the skills problem at its root, in primary schools, or is it just that the Secretary of State does not have the skills to do the job?

Alan Johnson: I shall ignore that barbed remark, which wounded me deeply. It is extraordinary that anyone from the Conservative Front Bench should stand up and make criticisms about literacy and numeracy. The National Foundation for Educational Research published a report in 1996 that showed that for 50 years we had flat-lined on literacy and numeracy. Jim Rose, whom I mentioned earlier, said in the opening paragraph of his review of teaching of early reading—an independent review—
	"Over the first nine years of the National Curriculum"—
	that is, 1989 to 1998—
	"very little impact was made on raising standards of reading. . . That changed markedly with the advent of the National Literacy Strategy in 1998."
	I applaud the previous Government for introducing accountability, introducing the regulator and ensuring that there were standards. However, nine years after they did that, nothing had happened, so we have put a huge amount of effort through teachers and head teachers to give children the skills that they need. We have raised educational attainment in literacy and numeracy massively, which is why people from countries all round the world are coming to the Britain to see how we did it.

Parenting Skills

John Pugh: If he will make a statement on the teaching of parenting skills in mainstream education.

Parmjit Dhanda: In personal, social and health education—PSHE— pupils are taught about the nature and importance of family life and bringing up children. They are also taught about the role, feelings and responsibilities of a parent and the qualities of good parenting and its value to family life.

John Pugh: I thank the Minister for that answer, but given the number of dysfunctional family backgrounds and given the fact that nearly every child becomes a parent and that children are necessarily brought up by amateurs, is there not a need for increased focus on this important area?

Parmjit Dhanda: I welcome the hon. Gentleman's point about the need to work with children, and work at an earlier stage. A great deal of work is being delivered through PSHE, as I said, and through citizenship classes in the hon. Gentleman's constituency, I am sure, as in mine. Beyond that, in every community in the land we have parenting support programmes for young parents and older parents being delivered at over 1,000 children's centres—there will be 2,500 of those by the end of 2008 and 3,500 come the end of the decade—and through 2,500 extended schools. That number will also increase. That is a fair indication of the Government's commitment to children, to parents and to parenting skills.

Graham Allen: Does my hon. Friend accept that effective parenting is even more important than good schooling in ensuring educational attainment? In constituencies like mine, Ofsted report after Ofsted report on primary schools states that the teaching is great, the heads are superb, we have a rebuilt or refurbished school, but the kids still do not attain. The reports always give the same explanation: those children cannot speak in a sentence when they arrive at school and cannot recognise a letter or a number.
	Will my hon. Friend look again at prior attainment before children get to primary school, so that before those children reach the age of two or five, or even when they are aged minus nine months to two or five years, we give the parents the support that they need to enable those children to take advantage of the great education that is now on offer?

Parmjit Dhanda: I know that my hon. Friend feels passionately about this topic. He had an Adjournment debate about the SEAL project in his constituency and in Nottingham with my predecessor, now the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle), when she was in post. I agree entirely that the focus needs to be at a very young age, and that the SEAL project and continuing work on that, targeting the under-twos, will make a real difference by ensuring that children are school-ready at a much earlier stage.

Robert Goodwill: Does the Minister agree that one key parenting skill, in which school leavers are often deficient, is the ability to prepare and cook balanced nutritional meals for children? Does he think that more should be done to improve the teaching of cooking skills in schools, which would address children's diets not only for the five meals a week that they eat in school, but for the 16 meals that they eat in the home?

Parmjit Dhanda: I particularly welcome the hon. Gentleman's question, not least because of comments, with which I fundamentally disagree, made by the hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) about chips and burgers being passed through the school fence.

Boris Johnson: I was misquoted.

Parmjit Dhanda: The tape says otherwise.
	As part of the offer that we announced this summer, we will provide children with the opportunity to learn. As well as the additional money for school meals, the five-point plan includes the objective of children reaching the age of 16 with the ability to cook nutritional, healthy meals. I am looking forward to seeing that being rolled out, and I know that Jamie Oliver and others support it.

Student Finance

Stephen Williams: What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the "Aim Higher" programme in informing potential students of the financial support available to them.

Bill Rammell: The new student finance package is better and fairer, giving more help to those who need it most. Assessment of our "Aim Higher" student finance information campaign has shown that awareness of tuition fee loans among potential students has increased significantly, and the assessment of other "Aim Higher" promotional activities, such as road shows, has been positive. We will continue our efforts to ensure that all students get the facts about what they are entitled to.

Stephen Williams: Under freedom of information rules, I have a copy of the media analysis of the "Aim Higher" campaign, which the Minister has referred to. Although he will take some comfort from the finding that his remarks were "consistently on message", he should be less comforted by the fact that the penetration of the message was highest among social class A and lowest among social classes D and E, which is the opposite of what the campaign was meant to achieve. Will he ensure that this year's campaign is directed at schools and colleges where participation in higher education is at its lowest?

Bill Rammell: On the key indicator of awareness of the tuition fee loan, which is effectively the end of the up-front contribution to the tuition fee, awareness has risen from 75 per cent. to 84 per cent., which is significant. I will throw back the challenge: will the hon. Gentleman join us in explaining the benefits of the new system? I get tired of hearing that the Liberal Democrats oppose tuition fees, given that they support them in Scotland. There has recently been a very interesting publication by a Liberal Democrat think-tank—

Mr. Speaker: Order.

David Kidney: There is a particularly low rate of going to university among children in care and care leavers. Will my hon. Friend assure the House that help will be given to local authorities in discharging their responsibilities towards children in care and care leavers in the form of "Aim Higher" advisers?

Bill Rammell: We are examining that issue closely, because we need to ensure that all the information gets across to children in care. In the Green Paper, we announced our intention to give an additional bursary to students who come from care and who go on to higher education, which is a significant step forward.

Judy Mallaber: Does my hon. Friend agree that "Aim Higher" has a complex task in encouraging potential students? Will he applaud an initiative in Derbyshire, where potential underachievers at GCSE maths were taken to Derby university for additional training to get their grades up? Those children were also introduced to maths students at the university and some high-flying groups were shown videos about the jobs that might be available if they were to enter maths education. Will he encourage initiatives to get underachieving and well-achieving children into university, where they can get used to learning in that environment?

Bill Rammell: I agree with my hon. Friend that we need more such initiatives. One of my frustrations is that too many young people who have the potential and aptitude to benefit from higher education still do not perceive it as an option for them. The "Aim Higher" programme targets young people and plants the seed of an interest in higher education, which is the direction that we should move in.

Student Finance

Stephen Hepburn: What assessment he has made of the administration of student loans; and if he will make a statement.

Bill Rammell: We have reviewed how students in England can obtain financial support for their studies in higher education. From September 2008, we will phase in a new service which will be mainly online and which will bring together applying for a place and applying for financial support. We will also change the Student Loans Company so that it is a national delivery organisation and further improve the collection of repayments through the income tax system.

Stephen Hepburn: The Minister will be aware that South Tyneside is part of the pilot scheme for student loans. Let me tell him that it is an absolute mess. Young people have not been paid yet, they and their parents are having to go into debt and they are having to consider whether to take up their university courses because they cannot afford the fees. There needs to be an investigation, compensation and a solution. The solution is to give it back to the councils, who did not make a mess of it, so that student loans do not become another debacle like the Child Support Agency or tax credits.

Bill Rammell: I take my hon. Friend's concerns seriously. We are introducing these reforms partly because there was too much variability in performance on the part of local authorities in the administration of the student loans scheme. However, knowing of his interest in the issue, I have looked into it and spoken to the Student Loans Company, which told me that, in South Tyneside, of the 2,100 applications, all but 40—fewer than 2 per cent.—have been paid on time at the start of the new academic year. Of those 40, some were made very recently and others may have been paid part of their loan while the SLC is awaiting further information. Whatever the explanation, we need to get to the bottom of it. Contingency arrangements are in place, and I will work with my hon. Friend to ensure that the situation is sorted out.

James Gray: It is good to hear that the Minister is going to work with his hon. Friend to get the shambles of the Student Loans Company sorted out. Does he agree that one of the most important parts of student loans administration is the repayment of teachers' loans scheme? Is he aware that there is a two-and-a-half to three-year delay in producing statements for constituents such as Mr. Chris Dutton of Chippenham, who asked as long ago as June 2005 for a statement of when his loan would be repaid? To date, he still has not got it. Today, the chief executive of the SLC told me that he hoped to get it sorted out by the end of the year. That is not good enough, and the Secretary of State needs to get this shambles sorted.

Bill Rammell: If the hon. Gentleman gives me the details of that case, I will ensure that it is dealt with quickly. I do not believe that we are dealing with a chaotic system or a shambles. However, there are difficulties—that is why we have conducted a very thorough and rigorous end-to-end review. We are consulting to get this absolutely right. The reforms that I set out earlier are the way forward to ensuring that we have a nationally uniform system that works in the interests of students.

School Building

Keith Vaz: When he next expects to visit Leicester to discuss the "Building Schools for the Future" initiative.

Jim Knight: I would be delighted to visit Leicester to discuss "Building Schools for the Future" and to enjoy my right hon. Friend's legendary hospitality. In addition, the Department's officials and Partnerships for Schools are in regular contact with the authority in working to support the development of the project, which is funded to the tune of £235 million, in Leicester.

Keith Vaz: We look forward to welcoming my hon. Friend to Leicester. As he knows, "Building Schools for the Future" has funded the complete modernisation and rebuilding of two schools in my constituency—Judge Meadow school and Soar Valley community college. What assurances can he give me that the other schools in Leicester, East, and in wider Leicester, will get the benefit of this extraordinarily wonderful scheme?

Jim Knight: I look forward to visiting one or two of the schools that my right hon. Friend mentioned. Leicester is in the first wave of "Building Schools for the Future". There are 16 schools in the project, four of which are in phase 1, so plenty of others beyond the two that he mentioned can look forward to the substantial investment that we are putting into schools.

David Willetts: Has the Minister heard the concerns expressed by Jamie Oliver—or St. Jamie, as my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) calls him—about the schools building programme? He is worried that they may not be built with the kitchens that are needed if kids are to have hot school dinners. He is also worried that in Leicester and across the country there are not the school dining facilities that would be necessary if we could get more schoolchildren eating hot school meals. Does the Minister agree that it would be absurd if the Government's schools building programme made it impossible to deliver better hot school dinners for our children?

Jim Knight: I passionately believe that it is important to have kitchen facilities in our schools, given that I represent a Dorset seat where the Tory county council closed the kitchens some 20 years ago. We do not have any kitchens in schools in Dorset and I am therefore looking forward to the investment, which will come. When we announced— [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) had better be quiet.

Jim Knight: The hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) clearly has a lot to say about school food. When we announced the five-point plan on school food, it included the commitment to a targeted capital fund for kitchens in schools. That remains a commitment as we go into the comprehensive spending review. We continue to have conversations with St. Jamie about his concerns and we always enjoy addressing them fully, unlike some.

David Taylor: During the recess, the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, of which I am a member, visited Leicester, as an environment city, and the school on Eyres Monsell estate in Leicester, South. Those involved have erected, with funds that they raised themselves, a wind turbine generator to produce most of the power that is consumed at the school. Will my hon. Friend consider whether there is scope in the "Building Schools for the Future" initiative to encourage admirable projects such as the one that we saw and were impressed by at Eyres Monsell school?

Jim Knight: Certainly, we are considering that carefully. The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Mr. Dhanda) launched the sustainable schools plan and we are considering whether we can provide capital to assist schools in investing sustainably in their buildings. Obviously, we consider that alongside the design elements of "Building Schools for the Future".

Education Facilities (Wellingborough)

Peter Bone: What plans there are for additional educational facilities to serve new housing development in Wellingborough East.

Jim Knight: It is a pleasure to respond yet again to the hon. Gentleman, who is in his usual place, asking me the same old question. Planning for new schools is undertaken locally by local authorities and Ministers have no role in the process. We have not been approached by Conservative-controlled Northamptonshire county council for a new Wellingborough school but my officials have made inquiries and two new primary schools are being considered as part of the development of east Wellingborough.

Peter Bone: I think I thank the Minister for that reply. However, he knows that the Government plan to build 167,000 homes in Northamptonshire, with many thousands in my constituency, yet there does not seem to be a proper plan for education. Given that the Government demolished a secondary school in my constituency when we had a Labour-controlled county council, my constituency is concerned about the Government's plans.

Jim Knight: The hon. Gentleman continues to raise the concern; he is clearly preoccupied with it. I think that he needs help from his friends in Northamptonshire who have the power to develop the matter. As the new housing developments are planned, we provide the money that is necessary to educate the children, but the hon. Gentleman's friends on Northamptonshire county council have to make the plans.

Foreign Languages

Graham Stuart: What measures the Department is taking to increase the number of pupils studying foreign languages at GCSE and A-level.

Alan Johnson: With the introduction of languages in primary schools, and the improvement of the quality of teaching and learning at key stage 3, we expect more pupils to want to continue to learn languages at GCSE and A-level. However, it will take time for the effects of our strategy to be realised. I can announce to the House that I have asked Lord Dearing to review our languages policy at key stage 4 and to consider what more can be done to increase take-up.

Graham Stuart: The Secretary of State may know that, in the past year, only 2,854 pupils in the East Riding of Yorkshire took languages at GCSE—down from 3,471 in 1997. Only 98 students took an A-level in languages in the East Riding of Yorkshire—down from 181 in 1997. I sincerely hope that he will consider reviewing the policy. Does he now regret the decision to remove languages as a compulsory subject at GCSE three years ago? Will he do a proper U-turn?

Alan Johnson: No. The fundamental question is whether that strategy was right. The hon. Gentleman is right that there has been a drop, but there has also been an improvement in attainment by those students who have continued to study languages.  [Interruption.] No, it is not marginal. In two years, pass rates are up 11 per cent. in French and 9.7 per cent. in German.
	There is a problem in this country: people who speak three languages are called trilingual, people who speak two languages are called bilingual, and those who speak one language are called English. We need to address that problem. Our strategy to do so is for children to start learning languages earlier—at age seven—and no longer to force kids who are starting their GCSEs to study a language if they do not wish to do so. We have no record of the Conservatives opposing that strategy, and it could be key to solving the problem. We want languages to flourish. Forcing 14 to 16-year-olds to learn a language will not achieve that objective, but exciting children about languages at an early age, and finding new and more inspiring ways of teaching languages, will do so.
	Lord Dearing has been asked to look into this issue. He has a tremendous track record and, if he says to us that this strategy is wrong and we should go into reverse, we will listen to that advice; we will do that. But Members in all parts of the House would have to be absolutely convinced that that is the right thing to do, and so would Lord Dearing, because the principles of those changes are right. I share the deep disappointment about the drop that there has been; there has been a decrease, not only in East Riding but across the country, of about 14.7 per cent. this year. That cannot be right, and we must do something about it.

Primary Schools

Greg Mulholland: What recent assessment he has made of primary school class sizes; and if he will make a statement.

Jim Knight: In January 2006, the average size of a primary class taught by one teacher was 26.3. In 1997, more than 20 per cent. of infant classes contained more than 30 pupils, but now that figure is down to 1.6 per cent. That transformation is due to this Government's investment, and our belief that every child deserves the best start in life.

Greg Mulholland: My wife is a primary school supply teacher in west Yorkshire and I have been amazed at the number of classes she has taught that have more than 30 children. She tells me that the children who are most detrimentally affected by large class sizes are those who struggle most—and, surely, they are the children whom we should be helping. That was backed up by research in 2003 by the university of London. There are 500,000 pupils in class sizes of more than 30. What will the Government do to bring that figure down next year, so that the most vulnerable pupils are cared for?

Jim Knight: Naturally, we take that issue seriously. That is why we made such a priority of it back in 1997, and why we have made such a difference by significantly reducing the numbers of those who are taught in class sizes of more than 30. But we are not complacent. There are circumstances in which, legally, the figure rises above 30—due to a statement of special educational needs, for example, with the stating of a school and that school being most appropriate. But we are drafting guidance for local authorities and schools that will help them to manage compliance with the infant class size ratio more fully, because we want to continue the drive to ensure that the student-teacher ratio, particularly in infant and primary schools, is as low as possible.

SOLICITOR-GENERAL

The Solicitor-General was asked—

Corruption

Hugh Bayley: What contribution his Department is making to the Government-wide initiative to tackle overseas corruption.

Mike O'Brien: My Department, and especially the Serious Fraud Office and the Crown Prosecution Service, has contributed to the UK action plan on overseas corruption. We have also provided training and technical expertise in tackling corruption to other countries, such as Romania, Macedonia, Ghana, Kenya and Bulgaria.

Hugh Bayley: When the Prime Minister responded to the all-party group on Africa report on the UK and corruption in Africa he said that the Government planned
	"to establish a dedicated unit jointly housed by the City of London and Metropolitan Police Forces to investigate allegations of foreign bribery by UK businesses, and use of the UK's financial system to launder the proceeds of corruption."
	What use will the SFO make of those investigatory resources to ensure that cases of trans-national bribery are brought before the courts?

Mike O'Brien: My hon. Friend has been pressing for the setting up of that unit and, as part of the national action plan on overseas corruption, the Metropolitan police and the City of London police have formed a specialised unit that will begin operations in three weeks' time, from 1 November. It will be tasked with the investigation of aspects of overseas corruption, and it will be funded by the Department for International Development. Of course, the SFO remains the lead department on overseas corruption, but the new City of London police and Metropolitan police unit will be a valuable resource that it can use. Clearly, the SFO cannot investigate all matters, but the new unit will be able to investigate those areas that the SFO cannot reach.

Anne McIntosh: The Solicitor-General must be aware of the concern that Romania and Bulgaria are being allowed to join the European Union before they have put their own houses in order. What threat does he believe that they pose to this country in terms of organised crime and corruption?

Mike O'Brien: Clearly, we are watching with care the impact that crime has in a number of eastern European states. We want the European Union to expand, but on the right terms, so we are developing much closer links with Bulgaria and Romania to ensure that we have the facility to work with them and to assist them, where we can, in tackling some of the crime and corruption problems that they obviously have.

Human Trafficking

Ian Austin: What steps the Crown Prosecution Service is taking to tackle human trafficking.

Mike O'Brien: Last week, I opened the United Kingdom human trafficking centre in Sheffield, which is staffed by the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and other agencies and aims to co-ordinate our work in tackling the trade in people. The CPS has developed a network of area prosecutors to deal with trafficking offences, and there is also improved training of prosecutors and CPS staff, who have been issued with national guidance to deal with human trafficking.

Ian Austin: The whole House will deplore the abuse suffered by innocent victims brought here against their will, but there are also organised criminal gangs charging illegal immigrants for illegal entry into Britain. What does he say to those of my constituents who want to know that illegal immigrants are removed quickly, and that those engaged in this illegal trade face the same tough penalties as those trafficking drugs and other serious organised criminals?

Mike O'Brien: The Government have improved the removal rates of those who arrive here illegally, and through legislation we are tackling sentencing issues. The key thing is to ensure that we can break up those involved in trafficking human beings. Operation Pentameter, which was undertaken between February and May this year, was very successful at breaking up some of the organised rings in this country. In dealing with the development of human trafficking for prostitution purposes, 84 victims were rescued and 230 people arrested. So we must not only deal with the removal of those who are here and with the proper sentencing of those involved; we must also ensure that they are caught in the first place.

Simon Hughes: A debate at our party conference last month recognised both the seriousness of this issue and the work already done by Government. But we also called on the Government to get the United Kingdom to sign and ratify the Council of Europe convention on trafficking in human beings, which we unanimously support and which is widely supported throughout the country. Is it now the view of Law Officers and the CPS that we should sign and ratify that convention, and will the Solicitor-General undertake that the Government will make that a priority in the weeks ahead?

Mike O'Brien: The straight answer is, not quite at the moment. We support the convention's aims—indeed, we played a significant part in negotiating it—but we have concerns about a number of particular aspects. The automatic granting of reflection periods and residence permits for trafficking victims give rise to some concerns. We should remember that trafficking victims might include not just those trafficked for the purposes of prostitution, about whom we have heard a lot in the newspapers recently. There are also those who come here—sometimes voluntarily—for economic purposes who are trafficked, in the sense that traffickers bring them in. A consultation was completed in April on how we might implement the proposals, and we are looking at the results. There are still some details to work out before we can make an announcement.

Tony Lloyd: Is my hon. and learned Friend satisfied that we are still getting this issue right in terms of sentencing policy and the priority given by law enforcement agencies to trafficking? We know that trafficking—certainly the trafficking of women—is very often accompanied by extreme violence and sexual violence. Frankly, the sentences of the courts do not always reflect just how serious the traffickers' underlying activities are. Can we now see a real determination to ensure that the police and the courts treat trafficking with the seriousness that society expects?

Mike O'Brien: I very much hope that we will. I am particularly pleased that the recent reference of a serious trafficking case to the Court of Appeal resulted in the sentence being substantially increased, to 23 years. The Court of Appeal has thereby sent out a clear message that those caught engaging in human trafficking need to be sentenced appropriately, which means serious custodial sentences. We have recently seen a number of those, following that reference to the Court of Appeal by the Attorney-General.
	The establishment of the United Kingdom human trafficking centre in Sheffield, and of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, means that we can focus more closely on dealing with this problem. This is a growing problem as a result of the global economy, and there is still a lot of work to do to address it. However, I can assure my hon. Friend that that work is being done.

Court Papers

Mark Lancaster: What action the Crown Prosecution Service is taking to improve the delivery of court papers.

Mike O'Brien: Statutory charging by the Crown Prosecution Service should ensure not only that the correct charge is made but that evidence and case papers are available at the first hearing. In addition, in the four pilot areas for the programme known as "Criminal justice: simple, speedy and summary", the CPS has committed additional resources to quality-assure papers delivered to court and to the defence.

Mark Lancaster: My constituent, Mr. Prokop, had his case dismissed at Milton Keynes court because he failed to turn up for the hearing. However, he claims that he never received notification of the court date. More alarmingly, when he contacted the court, it was unable to provide any evidence that the papers had ever been delivered. What action does the Solicitor-General intend to take to ensure that courts at least record the delivery of court papers?

Mike O'Brien: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman's office for alerting me to this case. We have made inquiries about it, and it appears that it might be a county court case, rather than one being dealt with by the Crown Prosecution Service. If the hon. Gentleman provides me with further details of the case, I will happily look into it for him.

Graham Allen: I thank my hon. and learned Friend for his recent visit to Nottingham, and for the impetus that he has given to our bid for a community court. Will he look further into the "Criminal justice: speedy, simple and summary" pilots and let the House know how they are going? If they are working successfully, as I believe that they are, will he consider extending them to my constituency and to the city of Nottingham?

Mike O'Brien: The pilots are apparently going very well, although they started only recently, so we need to be cautious about some of the results. The improvement in guilty pleas has been quite substantial, however. The key elements that we have seen include papers arriving and being provided early to the defence, so that cases can be ready at the first hearing. The result of that has been that guilty pleas have been running at 80 per cent., as 60 per cent. have been issued at the first hearing. Half of these cases have been dealt with at the first hearing. That is a very good result. The pilots are showing that, if we simplify the process of dealing with cases, ensure that the papers get there early, or before the first hearing, we can speed up the whole criminal justice process.

Dominic Grieve: If the Crown Prosecution Service is now showing itself to be much more efficient in relation to the provision of court papers—and, I assume, unused material—to ensure that trials can take place quickly, would it be worth while ensuring that some of its staff are delegated to work with the Home Office in the Special Immigration Appeals Commission process, to ensure that there is no repeat of an occurrence that we discovered this week, namely that material was not being properly disclosed in the SIAC process, leading to contradictory material being revealed in two cases? That is a serious scandal that undermines the credibility of the entire procedure.

Mike O'Brien: It is the case that a problem arose in a specific case involving SIAC. It is not the case, however, that that reveals a systemic problem. It shows that problems arose in a particular example. The Government are looking into the reasons why those problems arose, but I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman's claim that this undermines the whole system.

Business of the House

Theresa May: May I ask the Leader of the House to give us the business of the House for the coming week?

Jack Straw: The business for next week is as follows:
	Monday 16 October—Opposition day (19th allotted day). There will be a debate entitled "Post Office Network", followed by a debate entitled "The Green Tax Switch". Both arise on an Opposition motion in the name of the Liberal Democrats.
	Tuesday 17 October—Progress on remaining stages of the Companies Bill  [Lords].
	Wednesday 18 October—Progress on remaining stages of the Companies Bill  [Lords].
	Thursday 19 October—Conclusion of remaining stages of the Companies Bill  [Lords].
	Friday 20 October—Private Members' Bills.
	The provisional business for the following week will include:
	Monday 23 October—Remaining stages of the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill  [Lords].
	As I am sure the House will appreciate, at this time in the parliamentary year it is necessary to have some degree of flexibility when timetabling business. I will of course endeavour to give the House early notice of forthcoming business, but for the immediate future, I am afraid that I can announce business only for a week and a day ahead, because if I were to announce it for longer than that, it would only end up being changed.
	I should also like to inform the House about business in Westminster Hall:
	Thursday 26 October—A debate on the report from the Education and Skills Committee on special educational needs.

Theresa May: I thank the Leader of the House for giving us the business of the House for the coming week. I start by congratulating him on arranging for hon. Members to be able to table written questions during the recess. However, may I also ask him whether he has assessed the value of that exercise, in particular the impact on Government accountability?
	During the recess, the Modernisation Committee, which the Leader of the House chairs, published a report on the legislative process. When does he expect that any of the changes proposed might be considered by the House and introduced? When does he expect to be able to publish the calendar for the sittings of the House in the coming year?
	Today is the anniversary of the Bali bombing, where a number of British citizens were among those who lost their lives. There is no system of compensation for UK citizens who are the victims of terrorist attacks abroad. Can we have a debate on that important issue?
	Can we also have a debate, or a statement from the Home Secretary, on the use of figures and the compilation of statistics by the Home Office? I ask that in the light of a Home Office reply to a written question from my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Mr. Vara). He asked how many people have been arrested under anti-terrorism legislation and how long they were kept before being charged or released. The Leader of the House will realise that that is crucial to the debate on the time for which people may be held without charge and on 28 days versus 90 days.
	The reply from the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety was clear:
	"The Home Office does not collate information on the length of time an individual is detained prior to being charged or released".—[ Official Report, 18 September 2006; Vol. 449, c. 2490W.]
	In other words, he does not have a clue. We know that the Home Office has trouble with its figures, but surely when Ministers come to the House to propose restrictions of our civil liberties, they ought to know the facts.
	Talking of Ministers knowing facts, on Tuesday the Defence Secretary made a statement on Iraq and Afghanistan. My hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox), referring to the Prime Minister's promise that the troops in Afghanistan could have whatever resources they needed, asked how many helicopters were available to go to Afghanistan. The reply from the Defence Secretary was, again, clear:
	"candidly, I do not have the information to be able to answer."—[ Official Report, 10 October 2006; Vol. 450, c. 179.]
	Given that this is a subject of much public debate, I would have thought that the Defence Secretary would know how many helicopters we have. Can the Leader of the House please ensure that Ministers are properly briefed before they come to the House to make statements?
	Today, in figures published by the Healthcare Commission, we learn that more than half the NHS bodies in England need to improve their quality of service, and that nine out of 10 primary care trusts have been rated only weak or fair. When will the Health Secretary make a statement to the House on those results?
	Will the Health Secretary also come to the House and explain how much money has been spent reorganising the NHS in the past 10 years? As Polly Toynbee, whom I do not often quote, said of the Government in  The Guardian:
	"minister after minister reversed direction, created then tore up 10-year plans, dismantled then resurrected a market the party inherited. It invented new primary care groups, remade them into primary care trusts, then merged them again into half the number. It demolished regional health authorities, put in 28 Strategic Health Authorities, then merged them back down to the 10 original regions".
	Money has been wasted on bureaucratic changes, and this House deserves an explanation.
	On the subject of wasting money, when will the Government put before the House the money resolution needed to pay for the office of the Deputy Prime Minister? Questions from my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) have shown that, while the Deputy Prime Minister may not have a job, he does have 18 staff and will cost the taxpayer £2 million a year. I would have said that that was money for old rope, but I think that a piece of old rope would be more useful than the Deputy Prime Minister—

Mr. Speaker: Order. Members must always use temperate language. That comment is unworthy of the right hon. Lady.

Theresa May: I apologise for suggesting that there was any link between the Deputy Prime Minister and a piece of old rope. But when will the House have a chance to vote on the question of the value of the Deputy Prime Minister and the money necessary to pay for his office?
	I am sure that the Leader of the House will have concern for the well-being of Members, and an interest in ensuring that they are properly counselled after traumatic experiences. Can we therefore have a debate in which advice can be given to those Members suffering the after-effects of involvement in a failed coup bid?

Jack Straw: I knew that I had been missing something over the 11 weeks of the summer—it was the right hon. Lady's jokes. A serious gap was left in my enjoyment.
	I thank the right hon. Lady for her congratulations on the introduction of recess written questions. It seems that that was widely welcomed across the House—more than 100 Members asked 732 questions. We are currently analysing those, including how many were, and how many were not, answered on time. In addition, 35 written ministerial statements were made. I am in no doubt that, if we keep to the current recess arrangements, September questions are an important element. I also say to my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) that there will be an opportunity to debate the issue of September sittings, and I intend that that should take place before Prorogation in mid-November. That leads to the right hon. Lady's second question about the Modernisation Committee recommendations for changing the legislative process. I hope to make an announcement about that shortly. Although I cannot absolutely guarantee this at the moment, I hope that that will also be dealt with on the same day before Prorogation.
	I have received many representations about recess dates. As we have not made a decision about September sittings, I cannot give all the recess dates. As I know that that is causing difficulties on both sides of the House, I hope to announce the immediate recess dates, for Christmas and the half-term holiday in February, at business questions next Thursday.
	On the Bali bomb, I appreciate, of course, that today is the anniversary, as I was Foreign Secretary when I got the news of that terrible bombing. One Member of this House had a much closer and most terrible experience of that bombing. Consideration continues of the exact way in which we help victims of terrorism, abroad as well as at home, but we have sought, not least in consultation with the victims and relatives of victims of such terrible events, to ensure that we improve the support that we give.
	On Home Office statistics, I will look into the right hon. Lady's point, but I hope that she does not then start going on about the problem of form-filling by police officers, as forms are filled in by police officers to enable statistics to be provided. I make that as a serious point. She cannot have it both ways.
	On defence, I sat through the statement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence about the matériel being provided in Afghanistan. He made it clear that additional flying hours by helicopters, as well as by fixed-wing planes, were being provided. I am not sure whether he judges that it is in the national interest for the exact number of helicopters to be announced, but I will take that up with him.
	I am not surprised that the right hon. Lady left the issue of the NHS until low down in her questions, because I sat through the debate on the subject yesterday and it was a disaster for the Opposition. In one of the lamest Opposition speeches I have heard for a long time, the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) was holed below the water line as he protested about alleged cuts. The Conservative party has had to admit in its "NHS Campaign Pack" that
	"Labour have doubled spending on the NHS since 1997."
	In fact, spending has more than trebled. The Conservatives also say that there are now some "23,000 more doctors", but they have transposed the digits, because the true number is 32,000—

Mr. Speaker: Order. We should now move on from the document. The Leader of the House may place it in the Library if he wishes.

Jack Straw: A close reading of the document reveals the huge improvements that the Conservatives have had to admit that we have made in the health service. Those are confirmed by an interesting article by the independent chief economist of the King's Fund in today's  Evening Standard, which discusses today's report and states that, behind the headline scores, the performance of the NHS shows
	"some significant improvements. In particular, the Government's key targets on waiting times have produced dramatic reductions."
	It is about time that the right hon. Lady and other Opposition Members started to celebrate the success of the NHS instead of running it down.

Paul Truswell: I am sure that my right hon. Friend will have welcomed the statement made at Labour party conference by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport on his intentions to give local communities and local transport authorities the powers they need to provide decent bus services. Given that watershed announcement, can my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House arrange a debate, so that we may discuss in some detail the measures that are needed to reverse the 20 years of decline that have accompanied the deregulation of bus services outside London, which was introduced by the Conservatives?

Jack Straw: I acknowledge the point that my hon. Friend raises and he will be the first to celebrate the improvements in public transport that have happened, including a vast increase in travel by rail and a significant increase in bus use in London, which makes his point. We have Transport questions on Tuesday and I hope that he will be able to make his point to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State then.

David Heath: I thank the Leader of the House for his statement. I understand the need for flexibility at this time of year. For a start, of the first four Divisions in the House of Lords since the recess, three have been lost by the Government, one by a margin of more than two to one. I fully understand that it may be necessary for matters to pass between the two Houses over the next few weeks.
	Can the Leader of the House tell me, however, why we do not have a clear timetable for those Bills that are now before the House? The Fraud Bill seems to have disappeared without trace, the Charities Bill has disappeared temporarily and nobody has yet seen the Wireless Telegraphy Bill, which, allegedly, is in this House.
	At yesterday's Prime Minister's questions, the hon. Member for Newport, East (Jessica Morden) asked about maternity services, and she virtually declared her interest at the time. In his reply, the Prime Minister mentioned maternity pay and leave, but for some reason he omitted to mention maternity hospitals, probably because they are being closed up and down the country. Maternity services are being reorganised to suit the bureaucracy rather than mothers. May we have a debate on the provision of maternity services, because it is an important issue that affects all communities?
	I welcome the statement by the Secretary of State for Defence, but we are in the unique position of having two armies in the field at present, one of which is facing probably the most severe fighting for a generation. Is it not right that we should have an urgent debate on matters relating to those servicemen who are fighting so bravely in the field, such as military medical services, equipment, overstretch and the position of reservists, who are often overlooked? We need more than the routine defence debate. The debate should be targeted at the soldiers, sailors and air personnel presently risking their lives in the service of their country.
	Finally, the Leader of the House has already shown himself to be innovative, and I hope that he will introduce another innovation. We will have the Gracious Speech in a few weeks. Can he arrange to have ready in the Vote Office on that day a clear and unambiguous list of the Bills that the Government intend to introduce? The list should also present the Bills' subject matter in broad terms, and mention the responsible Department. As things stand, armies of people have to try to decipher what the Gracious Speech might mean, and that is nonsense. We need a clear list of Bills on the day, so that we know what is to be introduced. I acknowledge that other Bills may come later and that plans may change, but such a list would be a service to the House and to people outside it.

Jack Straw: I shall look at the respective timetables for the Fraud, Charities and Wireless Telegraphy Bills and let the hon. Gentleman know, but I assure him that the matter is in hand. Those Bills are significant, but I somehow doubt that his constituents are gagging for information about them.

David Heath: Fraud is quite important.

Jack Straw: I do not mean to undermine the significance of any of those Bills.
	The hon. Gentleman raised an important issue in respect of maternity services. There used to be three maternity hospitals in the area that I and a couple of colleagues represent. The two smaller ones were closed when the Conservatives were in power, but we tried to ensure that public concern was balanced by the promise that the services to be provided in the main general hospital would be better. Although people had affection for the old maternity units, we argued that it would be better to concentrate the services. The key issue that hon. Members of all parties must understand is that the nature of medical care has changed, with mothers who have just delivered their babies spending much less time in hospital. There is bound to be some reconfiguration, but the important questions have to do with whether the services provide effective care before, at the time of and after birth, and whether ill babies are more likely to recover. According to those indicators, the service is getting better and not worse.
	I shall discuss the matter of Afghanistan and Iraq with my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Defence and the Patronage Secretary. The truth is, however, that we have been able to debate Afghanistan and Iraq on many occasions.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about the Queen's Speech. I know that some of the things that the Government do are a bit obscure, but the Queen's Speech is pretty straightforward, in terms of the Bills that we are proposing. Moreover, the website that my office prepares contains details of all Bills, as well as departmental contact details.

Laura Moffatt: Following yesterday's Opposition day debate on the NHS, will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate on nurse education? I was unable to take part yesterday, but I note that the subject of nurse education was woefully absent from the debate. There have been tremendous advances in nurse education, and university facilities have been expanded. The Open university's distance learning opportunities are fantastic, and the fact that it is able to place a great many nurses in jobs soon after training is something to be admired. Sadly, no mention was made of that in yesterday's debate.

Jack Straw: My hon. Friend has great experience and knowledge of these matters, and I am glad that she has raised that issue. I shall certainly consider holding a debate on nurse education, not least so that the House can look at the changes and improvements that this Government have introduced. The number of nurses has increased by many thousands, and their real-terms pay has risen by more than 25 per cent. above inflation.

Henry Bellingham: Can we have a debate on county council road schemes? Is the Leader of the House aware that counties such as Norfolk used to be able to set the priorities for non-trunk, A-road schemes that would then attract Government grant? However, since 2004, the priorities are set on a regional basis by the East Anglia regional assembly—a bloated, unpopular and unaccountable body. That means that local bypasses, such as the Westbridge bypass in my constituency, lose out. What will the Government do about that?

Jack Straw: I shall consider the matter, but the bloated and unpopular body to which the hon. Gentleman refers has quite a number of Conservative councillors. I suggest that he talk to them.

Martin Linton: Can my right hon. Friend find time for a debate on crane safety, following the tragic accident in my constituency in which two people died? Such a debate would allow the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to report to the House on the number of similar fatalities, and review the need for further changes in crane safety. That would benefit people who work on cranes, and those who work next to building sites and who look nervously at the cranes towering over them.

Jack Straw: The accident in my hon. Friend's Battersea constituency was a terrible one. On behalf of the Government and the House, I should like to send our condolences to the relatives of those who were killed, and our sympathy to those who were injured. It will be no comfort to them to know that safety at work has improved in recent years, but even one accident or fatality is one too many. I shall of course raise the matter with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and I know that my hon. Friend is raising the matter with the Health and Safety Executive.

Mark Hunter: Will the Leader of the House please find time for a debate on the implications of British Airways' proposal to close its cabin crew base at Manchester airport? The move will affect several dozen residents in my constituency and in neighbouring areas, where jobs are now at risk. It also calls into question the commitment of our national airline to regional centres such as Manchester. Does he recognise that this very serious matter deserves to be considered by the House?

Jack Straw: Manchester airport is a fantastic airport, and the increases in passengers and services there have been huge. It is also municipally owned. I hope that the hon. Gentleman finds an opportunity to raise the issue to which he refers in an Adjournment debate or at next Tuesday's Transport questions.

Gerald Kaufman: Will my right hon. Friend find time to debate early-day motion 2689, tabled by me and supported by a number of other hon. Members?
	 [That this House expresses its extreme concern at the handling of immigration cases by the Manchester firm of solicitors, Thornhills; notes that Thornhills often take up, for money, immigration application cases that do not require the involvement of solicitors; further notes that repeatedly they handle these cases so incompetently that applicants feel obliged to consult their hon. Member in order to obtain the outcome that Thornhills have failed to achieve; is deeply concerned that in one recent case whose applicants felt obliged to consult their hon. Member Thornhills refused to hand over important documents in their possession until an exorbitant bill had been paid; and warns people in Manchester to have nothing whatever to do with this firm.]
	The motion deals with Thornhills solicitors in Manchester, who take on immigration cases and botch them. They charge a great deal of money for the cases, which often end up with Members of Parliament. Will he pay special attention to a case in my constituency, in which Thornhills, even though they failed to deal with it, held on to the papers until my constituents paid them an exorbitant bill?

Jack Straw: All of us in the House who have any experience of dealing with immigration cases will recognise the seriousness of the issue that my right hon. Friend raises, and the outrageous way in which some solicitors firms behave. I hope that the appropriate disciplinary authorities will look at the very important facts that he has put before the House.

George Young: The Leader of the House told the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) a moment ago that the House had many opportunities to debate Afghanistan and Iraq. Does he agree that the situation there has sadly deteriorated since we rose for the summer recess? Would it not be appropriate to have a whole-day debate in Government time on this matter, instead of a debate about whether we should sit in September?

Jack Straw: I acknowledge that a case can always be made for the Government to find time for defence and foreign affairs debates. It happens that five days each year are earmarked for defence-related debates, although no specific Government-time debates are earmarked for foreign policy. One matter that I am considering, in the context of the Modernisation Committee, is whether we should aim for a better allocation of subject-day debates in Government time to take account of the fact that this country is far more involved in military action overseas than was the case, say, a decade ago.

Fraser Kemp: The Leader of the House might be aware that the £69 million Turner and Newall asbestos fund comes into existence today. Victims of the terrible disease that asbestos causes, and their families, can be found in my constituency and elsewhere. They can claim between 17p and 20p in the pound for their illness, which stands in stark contrast to the fact that lawyers and accountants dealing with the parent company can claim 100p in the pound of the £70 million made available to cover administrative fees. Will my right hon. Friend arrange for an early debate on the matter, so that the House can consider whether the cut in compensation that disease victims have had to accept should also apply to the scheme's administrators?

Jack Straw: I understand exactly my hon. Friend's point. Solicitors' administration charges in some of those cases are exorbitant and unacceptable, so I am not surprised that his constituents feel as they do.

Oliver Heald: Will the Leader of the House ensure that we have a debate about the Post Office on a motion that is drawn widely enough for me to raise both the threat to Letchworth Garden City main post office, which it is proposed to move from the town centre to the edge of the industrial area, and also the attitude of Post Office senior management, particularly Mr. Cook, the director responsible, who has refused to meet me to discuss the matter and has not even replied personally? Does the Leader of the House agree that that is disgraceful from a publicly owned company?

Jack Straw: I am pleased to tell the hon. Gentleman that I can give him immediate satisfaction on his request for a debate. Care of the Liberal Democrats, there will be a debate on Monday, so they were obviously listening to somebody. The Post Office is having to cope with changes quite beyond its control—[ Interruption.] Of course it is. There has been a serious decline in traditional letters since the introduction of e-mail and the internet, so the Post Office has to make changes. There is no point in laughing about it; that is the situation. To cope with those changes, we have ensured that £2 billion has been put in to maintain the network, including £750 million for the rural network. That is a high level of subsidy—far higher, I suggest, than we would have seen from a Conservative Government.

James McGovern: During the summer recess, my right hon. Friend will no doubt have been contacted by constituents who were charged severe penalties by banks, even when they were only slightly overdrawn. Despite such charges being clearly disproportionate to the costs incurred, all banks seem to impose them, so may we have a debate to determine what steps the Government can take to stop that blatant profiteering by high street banks?

Jack Straw: I understand the concern that my hon. Friend raises. There are questions to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry next Thursday, and I hope that my hon. Friend will raise the matter as it is of profound concern to constituents across the country.

Richard Shepherd: The Leader of the House will well remember those bright days of "Your Right to Know"—the Government White Paper of which he was a signatory; indeed, he steered the freedom of information legislation through the House. Has he had an opportunity to read early-day motion 2699?
	 [That this House welcomes the finding of the Constitutional Affairs Committee (HC991) that the Freedom of Information Act has 'already brought about the release of significant new information and....this information is being used in a constructive and positive way' and the committee's conclusion that it sees 'no need to change' the Act's charging arrangements; views with concern reports that the Government is considering changing these arrangements to permit an application fee to be charged for all requests or to allow authorities to refuse, on cost grounds, a significant proportion of requests which they currently must answer; and considers that such changes could undermine the Act's benefits of increased openness, accountability and trust in the work of public authorities.]
	The early-day motion was signed by Members on both sides of the House, and is in respect of the strong rumours that the Government are considering changing the present fee arrangements, which will have a deleterious effect on access and on the objectives that the Government stated in their White Paper and in its support through legislation.

Jack Straw: It is not rumour but fact. When we began operation of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, 18 months ago at the beginning of 2005, we said that we would review its operation after it had been in force for a year. That is what my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor has been doing, in consultation with colleagues. Subsequently, a report was produced by the Select Committee on Constitutional Affairs, to which, as is entirely proper, my noble Friend, in consultation with his Cabinet colleagues, is considering the Government's response, so that we can put our views before the Select Committee and the House. That is the appropriate way to proceed.

Ann Cryer: I wonder whether my right hon. Friend could find time for a debate on human trafficking. I was a member of the Council of Europe for six years so I am well aware of the problems arising from that terrible trade. I am also well aware of the fact that the Government are concerned and that last week they opened a new centre in Sheffield. What I am not sure about is the fate of women so trafficked. It may be demonstrated that, yes, they have been trafficked but it may also be demonstrated that they are in this country illegally. I should like to know just what their fate will be.

Jack Straw: I thank my hon. Friend for all the concern she has shown about this very difficult issue; it is a serious matter. I will certainly pursue her concerns with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. We have all heard of harrowing cases of that kind, where women subjected to enforced trafficking end up in this country, but they have no papers and no right to remain, so decisions have to be made on compassionate grounds to allow them to stay. We have to ensure—as my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary does—that the interests of the women in those very distressing cases are high on the list of considerations.

Justine Greening: May we have a debate not only on compensation for sufferers of mesothelioma but also on their care and treatment? The Leader of the House will remember that just before the summer recess I raised the case of my constituent, Mr. Harward, who was unable to get the only drug licensed to treat mesothelioma, as it had not been funded by his primary care trust. He died because he did not receive treatment, but it is still not too late for the Government to take tough action to ensure that treatment is available for surviving sufferers of that terminal condition. Will the right hon. Gentleman agree to hold a debate and to rattle the chains of the Secretary of State for Health so that she is slightly more proactive on the topic than she was during the summer when I wrote to her on several occasions?

Jack Straw: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State responds promptly to a very large number of understandable concerns. I am sorry to hear of the death of the hon. Lady's constituent. Without commenting on that case, I am glad that yesterday the parties were agreed on at least one thing in respect of the national health service—that the arrangements of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which gives independent judgment about the efficacy of drugs, should stand. Yesterday, when pressed—very heavily—from the Back Benches by the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, the Conservative spokesman on health, the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley), made it absolutely clear that he would not disturb the arrangements for NICE, as he was being requested to do.

John Battle: May I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to early-day motion 2081?
	 [That this House notes the case of Mirza Tahir Hussain of Leeds who holds dual British/Pakistani nationality and is facing the death penalty on 3rd June; further notes that he was 18 years old when he travelled to Pakistan in 1988, has been accused of murder and robbing a taxi driver, that these claims have not been verified beyond reasonable doubt or to the standards laid by the European and Human Rights Commission and that in 1992 and 1996 the High Court quashed the sentence and acquitted him of all charges; and urges the Government to petition the President of Pakistan to prevent the execution of Mirza Tahir Hussain.]
	Mr. Mirza Tahir Hussain from Leeds has been imprisoned in Pakistan since 1988 on what is widely regarded as an unsafe conviction. Since May, when the early-day motion was tabled, his execution has been postponed five times, but it is widely rumoured that he will be executed at the end of this month. I urge my right hon. Friend to get the Government to step up demands to stop that death sentence and I urge all colleagues to sign the early-day motion, as it could help to save the life of someone who has been unjustly convicted.

Jack Straw: I am all too well aware of the circumstances of the case, not least from my time as Foreign Secretary. Representations at the very highest level of the British Government have been made to His Excellency President Musharraf and to other appropriate Ministers in his Government. We shall continue to do everything we can to ensure that the stays of execution are turned into a reprieve from the death sentence.

Hywel Williams: May we have a debate on restoring face-to-face interviews as the normal provision for pensioners and disabled people claiming social security benefits, as there is much dissatisfaction with the current telephone system? Now that the Leader of the House has asserted his right to face-to-face interviews, will he do the same for that most vulnerable group?

Jack Straw: Speaking from my own constituency, I have few complaints about how the Department for Work and Pensions deals with the concerns of pensioners. I will certainly pass on the hon. Gentleman's concerns to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, but I think the current arrangements, whereby initial contact is by telephone and, if necessary, there can be a home visit, are probably appropriate. Of course, if the hon. Gentleman has specific cases of concern I will see that they are followed up.

John Smith: There was yet another tragic death this summer of one of my constituents from a suspected deep vein thrombosis following a long-haul flight—that of Mr. Les Rogers, aged 38, who was flying out to Australia to represent his country in the Commonwealth bowling championship. Although I welcome the provisions in the Civil Aviation Bill, which will come before the House today, will my right hon. Friend find time to debate in the House the need to place exactly the same duty of care in law on airlines for the health and well-being of their passengers as exists for all other passenger carriers?

Jack Straw: Our hearts go out to the relatives of the gentleman who died as a result of deep vein thrombosis. My hon. Friend will be aware that we have taken some steps better to ensure that the incidence of that condition is lessened. I will certainly pass on his concerns to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport, and I remind my hon. Friend that Transport questions are coming up next Tuesday.

Julie Kirkbride: Following the remarks made by the Leader of the House about discouraging Muslim ladies from wearing the veil, will he help to clarify for the House some confusion in Government policy? He must be aware that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport suggested during the summer that the BBC should be encouraged to use more TV presenters who wear Muslim headgear, so that we can all get more used to the idea. Can he help to clarify what the Government mean on this issue?

Jack Straw: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. That has nothing to do with next week's business.

Julie Morgan: Will my right hon. Friend find time to debate miscarriages of justice? Last night, my constituent, Mr. Michael O'Brien, accepted £300,000 in an out-of-court settlement with South Wales police, but there was no apology and no acknowledgement of the events that led up to that decision. Sadly, today is the 19th anniversary of the death of the murder victim, Phillip Saunders—a Cardiff newsagent, who lived in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan)—and I want express my sympathy to his family. The investigation into his murder still goes on. Will my right hon. Friend arrange a debate on those issues?

Jack Straw: I hope very much that my hon. Friend can find an opportunity for such a debate—for example, in Westminster Hall or on the Adjournment. I understand her concern. In the past 10 years, as a result of legislation initiated by the previous Government in 1996, and the establishment of the Criminal Cases Review Commission, as well as other improvements, under this Administration, there has been a significant improvement in dealing with alleged miscarriages of justice. However, that does not in any sense undermine the profound anger that will be felt by that person at the miscarriage of justice perpetrated on him; nor, above all, does it reduce the deep concern of the victim's relatives about the fact that, so many years on, no guilty person has been brought to justice.

Robert Smith: The Leader of the House has said that the future of the Post Office depends on the uncertainties that it faces, but many of them stem from the Government. Will he ensure that Ministers use Monday's debate to respond to today's publication by Postcomm, the postal regulator? Paragraph 19 of its foreword says:
	"A decision is urgently needed from the Government on the future of the Post Office network."
	If the many sub-postmasters throughout the country who provide vital services to rural areas are to make a decision about their future, they need to know what the Government have decided that that future should be.

Jack Straw: I am sorry to say that the fundamental uncertainty faced by the Post Office arises from the extraordinary pace of change in the introduction of information technology . [ Interruption. ] That is absolutely true. It is affecting post offices all over the world. There is a dramatic change both in the number of letters posted and in the payment of benefits, which is a core business, particularly for sub-post offices. I repeat that we have recognised the fact that the Post Office faces a very big transitional problem. That is why we have put in £2 billion to help to maintain the network, including £750 million for the rural network. Of course my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry—who represents a Scottish constituency, albeit an urban one—is well aware of the problem in far-flung rural constituencies in Scotland and elsewhere, and he will ensure that there is an effective response to the motion that is, no doubt, being tabled by the Liberal Democrats.

Keith Vaz: Will the Leader of the House arrange an urgent, definitive and clear statement from the Home Secretary on whether the Government will impose employment restrictions on the citizens of Bulgaria and Romania when they join the EU in 11 weeks' time? As a champion of enlargement, my right hon. Friend will know how important it is that we consult our potential EU partners and that we are clear about whether there will be such restrictions to avoid a repeat of the hysteria of the tabloid press before the last enlargement process on 1 May 2004.

Jack Straw: I accept my right hon. Friend's point. As we have made clear, Romanians and Bulgarians will be subject to restricted access to our labour markets, once their countries join the European Union on 1 January 2007. We believe that a gradual approach is required, and more details of our approach will be given to the House by the end of this month.

Philip Davies: I congratulate the Leader of the House on having the courage over the summer to raise the issue of veils and say something that many people in the country think, but that no one has previously dared to say. Will he consider a debate on forced marriages? Legislation to outlaw that practice was dropped by the Government just before the summer recess. I am sure that he cannot believe that Muslim women should not be allowed to wear veils, but should be able to be forced into marriages against their will. May we have a debate to judge the mood of the House and to bring back plans to legislate to outlaw that outrageous practice?

Jack Straw: We are all agreed on the need to outlaw forced marriages. During my period as Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary and during that of my successors, the Government have taken a great deal of action to ensure better enforcement against forced marriages and to provide far better support—especially in Pakistan, where the main problem arises—for the victims of forced marriages. I am always happy to ensure that we do more.

Betty Williams: My right hon. Friend will have noticed this week how warm it is in the Palace of Westminster. His ministerial colleagues are for ever, rightly, urging us and our constituents to conserve energy in our private lives. Will he have an urgent discussion with the House authorities, so that we can practice what we preach and do out bit in this place?

Jack Straw: I think that we have all lost a few pounds this week, as a result of the fact that the atmosphere in the House has been even more sweltering than it has been outside, where it is unusually warm. My hon. Friend raises an important point. There is a debate on climate change today, and she may wish to put her remarks in that debate as well.

Douglas Hogg: Might I say to the right hon. Gentleman that it would help if we could have an earnest statement from the Home Secretary about the operation of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, especially with regard to the two cases of MK and Abu Doha? The right hon. Gentleman will know that many of us are very concerned about the secretive nature of the proceedings and the risk of injustice. He will also know that, in the case of MK, the judge has found that false information was supplied by the Home Office to the tribunal and, furthermore, that there was wholly inadequate disclosure, and the Home Secretary was criticised. Can we please know what the Home Secretary will do to meet the criticisms made of the Home Office by the trial judge?

Jack Straw: Of course the right hon. and learned Gentleman raises a very serious matter, but it was the subject of an exchange between the shadow Attorney-General and my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General just before I stood up to speak. My hon. and learned Friend said that what had happened was unacceptable—it certainly is—but it is a very unusual case.
	On the overall issue of the standing of SIAC, the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows that it is extraordinarily difficult to set up a forum that is both fair and necessarily protects the intelligence that must be protected in such cases. SIAC, as I remember, was originally a creation of the previous Government, with our endorsement. We have developed it, and it has worked satisfactorily. As he will accept, one hard case should not be allowed to lead to a general change in what, overall, has been a satisfactory arrangement.

David Drew: Will the Leader of the House have a word with the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry about the policies that the Royal Mail is pursuing? I am thinking, in particular, of the decision to announce the closure of both the Gloucester and Reading sorting offices and to centralise those services on Swindon. Will he ask, through his good offices, for the report on which that decision is based to be made available to us? Dare I say—on a day when environmental concerns are uppermost in all our minds—that it is not very bright to have a letter that is posted in Stroud possibly taken to Swindon and then perhaps via Bristol back to Stroud. That is not the way forward. Would he care to comment on that?

Jack Straw: I understand my hon. Friend's concern. There are questions to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry next Thursday and I hope that he can raise that matter then. Meanwhile, I will certainly pass on his concerns to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. We are all concerned. What he is talking about applies not only to the Post Office, but to supermarkets: goods travel huge distances around the country, apparently for no great purpose.

Julian Lewis: Now that we have a Lord Chief Justice who pursues an agenda by posing as a criminal on community service and who makes a speech comparing present-day sentencing to barbaric past practices, may we have a debate on the Government's policy on the protection of the public from violent crime now that the prisons are full?

Jack Straw: May I say to the hon. Gentleman that it is totally unacceptable for any of us to start parodying the position taken by as distinguished and senior a judge as the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips? I happen to know the Lord Chief Justice, as I knew his predecessors, and he is as concerned as anybody in this House or the other place about protecting the public.  [ Interruption. ] Of course he is. There is no suggestion whatever that he or his Court of Appeal criminal division are going to go soft on violent offenders. That has never been part of what he has been talking about. What he has talked about is what successive Home Secretaries and Governments have talked about: a balance between custodial and non-custodial sentences for non-violent offenders, and ensuring—this is necessary under any Government—that the available prison places are used sensibly and the prisons are not full to bursting point. It certainly does not lie in the mouth of any Opposition Member to start complaining about the number of prison places now, because there are many, many thousands more than there were in 1997 and there were very few plans for any increase in the last Budget of the last Conservative Government.

Richard Benyon: Those of us who recently visited RAF Odiham heard at first hand of the courage of our air crews who are flying Chinooks in Afghanistan. Bearing it in mind that and other sources, many of us were greatly surprised to hear the breezily uttered comments by the Prime Minister on the British Forces Broadcasting Service that all the equipment that the armed forces need would be made available. May we have a debate on what extra equipment the armed forces require, what actually exists and what the Government propose to do about the shortfall?

Jack Straw: First, like the hon. Gentleman, I pay tribute to the service personnel and civilians operating from the air base in his constituency, as well as those around the country. They show extraordinary bravery and skill, as I know personally. I said to the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) earlier that I acknowledge the case for a debate on these important issues and I hope to ensure that there will be an opportunity for such a debate to be provided.

Andrew MacKay: Does the Leader of the House think that it is right for a spouse or a partner of somebody serving a prison sentence to be eligible for council tax benefit, if a spouse or a partner of somebody who is serving their country in a war zone such as Afghanistan, Iraq or the Balkans is not? If he agrees that that is wrong, will he arrange for a Minister to make an urgent statement in the House next week?

Jack Straw: I share the right hon. Gentleman's concern. To put it at its mildest, it is anomalous, and the matter is being reviewed as I speak.

Desmond Swayne: Will the Leader of the House place on the Order Paper next week the necessary motions to put an end to the scandal in a free Parliament of the European Scrutiny Committee meeting in secret? That is for the fourth time of asking.

Jack Straw: I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Gentleman, but there are actually quite good reasons, in a free and democratic Parliament, for the Scrutiny Committee to meet not in secret, but in private. He knows that plenty of Select Committees hold meetings in private. There are good explanations in the report of the Modernisation Committee on European scrutiny, and much else besides, as to why that practice is sensible.

John Hayes: When I asked the Secretary of State for Education and Skills earlier about the paucity of core skills, you will have been surprised and disappointed by his answer, Mr. Speaker. He ignored the fact that one in three employers now have to provide remedial training to teach staff how to read, write and count. The skills crisis is affecting our economy and we need a debate on it. I hope that the Leader of the House will treat that as a matter of some urgency.

Jack Straw: There are plenty of opportunities to debate our excellent record on skills training. We can always do more, but we have invested hugely in further education vocational training and that is showing in the increasing number of young people on modern apprenticeships, as well as much else besides.

John Bercow: May we please have a statement or debate next week on the continuing crisis in Darfur, western Sudan? Given that murder and rape continue unabated and that foot-stamping by the Sudanese Government has already effectively vetoed a vital United Nations troop deployment to the region, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it would be timely for the House to debate whether the responsibility of the United Nations to protect is a serious attempt to avert genocide or simply a rather futile exercise in vacuous moral posturing?

Jack Straw: Ensuring that the United Nations always practises what it preaches is an enduring challenge for all of us who are, or have been, involved in international diplomacy. The issue is really serious. I hope that it can be debated in the House and that the concern that everybody feels on the issue of Darfur is made very vocal. As the hon. Gentleman suggests, the United Nations committed itself last year to intervening under its responsibility to protect. I am sorry to say that one permanent member, at least, of the Security Council was very reluctant to ensure that that happened. The result is that that member of the Security Council is effectively protecting the regime in Khartoum.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. We now come to the main business.

Point of Order

Peter Bone: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday at Prime Minister's questions, the Prime Minister stated, in relation to hospital operations:
	"We now have no one waiting for more than six months".—[ Official Report, 11 October 2006; Vol. 450, c. 291.]
	The Department of Health has confirmed to me that there are many people waiting more than six months for an NHS in-patient operation and that figure is increasing, rather than decreasing. What mechanisms are available to ensure that the Prime Minister corrects his inaccurate statement?

Mr. Speaker: Well, the hon. Gentleman can put a question down for the Prime Minister and ask him to correct a statement that the hon. Gentleman considers to be inaccurate, but it is not for the Chair to intervene in these matters.

Orders of the Day

Civil Aviation Bill

Lords Reasons for insisting on certain of their amendments to which the Commons have disagreed, considered.

Clause 1
	 — 
	Aerodrome charges: noise and emissions

Lords Reasons: 1B, 2B, 4B.

Gillian Merron: I beg to move, That this House insists on its disagreement with the Lords in their amendments and proposes Government amendments (a) and (b) in lieu thereof.
	Commencing with amendment No. 1, we simply do not believe that it would be appropriate to impose a legal duty on all 140-odd licensed aerodromes to impose noise-related and emissions charges. Such a move would be disproportionate and would represent gross over-regulation. Many of the aerodromes are relatively small in size and will cause little or no significant disturbance or local air quality problems. Such a move would be at odds with the Government's policy of not imposing unnecessary regulation on business. On that we have been, and continue to be, steadfastly clear.
	I respectfully point out to hon. Members that the proposal in the Lords amendments would run contrary to guidance from the International Civil Aviation Organisation that noise-related charges should be levied only at airports experiencing noise problems. Airports have had a statutory power to charge for aircraft by reference to their noise for some 25 years, but our policy on aircraft noise is that whenever possible, local controls rather than Government diktat are the best way of managing the local environmental impact of aviation.

Alistair Carmichael: The Minister must accept that the movement of aircraft noise over that period has been in one direction only—upwards—and that that has caused many people living around airports great inconvenience and discomfort. If we do not accept this proposal, what should we do? It is clear that the status quo is not working.

Gillian Merron: I note the hon. Gentleman's view, but the question is whether the proposal deals with the point that he makes, and I suggest that it does not. The Bill as a whole takes us forward. Perhaps he will allow me to continue to outline how we can continue to take forward aviation for all stakeholders, including local communities.
	Such a policy on the management of the local environmental impact of aviation was underscored in "The Future of Air Transport" White Paper. Many of our larger airports have regard to noise when setting their charges. BAA already applies an emissions-related charge at Heathrow and Gatwick by using the airports' conditions of use. However, it is important to put it beyond any doubt that any licensed aerodrome has the power to set such charges if their local circumstances make that necessary. That is the purpose of clause 1.

Alan Simpson: Will the Minister explain how we get around the conundrum that was raised in another place about the contrast between Birmingham and Coventry? She says that an airport can raise charges when there is a problem, but if it has no duty to monitor, how will it recognise that there is a problem? If there is no duty to monitor and a duty to charge, how do we impose the same constraints on an airport such as Coventry as those that apply to the designated airports?

Gillian Merron: It might help my hon. Friend if I outline why a blanket duty for airports such as that proposed is not the right way forward. A problem arises due to the evidence that exists.
	Imposing a uniform requirement that an airport's charges must be set by reference to noise and emissions would undercut an airport's ability to reflect its local circumstances. I emphasise that we are considering not whether airports should be able to do that, but whether we should require them all to do so in exactly the same way. Charges are not the only lever—or even, in the case of aircraft noise, the most significant one—that we will expect airport operators to use to address the impact of their operations on local people. I emphasise to hon. Members that clauses 3 and 4 will do far more than that to drive improvements in the noise climate around airports. They will enable airport operators to impose penalties for breaches of the noise control measures that they have in place, such as noise limits on departing aircraft and noise-preferential routes. The revenue raised from the penalties will have to be put towards purposes that are of benefit to the wider community around the airport.

David Taylor: I am grateful to my hon. Friend from the east midlands region for allowing me to make an intervention. The Minister will be aware of the long campaign to get East Midlands airport—or Nottingham East Midlands airport, as it is now unfortunately named—designated under the Civil Aviation Act 1982. She and her predecessors have declined so to do and have fallen back on the suggestion that local agreement will resolve the problems. However, East Midlands airport's 10-point plan has been imposed on local communities, and they rejected it several months ago at the independent consulting committee by 15 votes to one. What options do those communities have, unless we can require regional airports with a larger number of night-time flights than Heathrow to impose charges to reflect quota counts and noisy aircraft? Why can we not make that compulsory? The local agreement is not working.

Gillian Merron: Although I appreciate the worries about local noise that my hon. Friend and others have expressed, it is believed that the airport is fully committed to responding effectively. Several changes have taken place over the years. It is not necessarily the case that designation delivers fewer night flights or tougher controls. Additionally, NEMA has indicated that it wishes to take advantage of the powers in the Bill by taking tougher local action to protect the noise environment. The draft master plan—my hon. Friend will realise that the consultation recently closed—set out details of plans to minimise impacts and to respond to community concerns. I would not say that the specific matter before the House relates to designation, but I note my hon. Friend's concerns about NEMA. Of course, should NEMA wish to put forward a further application for designation, it will be considered properly and fully.

Edward Garnier: I have supported the efforts of the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) on designation, but I want to pick up what the Minister said about localities. Amendment (a) in lieu refers to
	"the area in which the aerodrome is situated",
	while clause 1, which will itself amend section 38 of the 1982 Act, uses the phrase
	"in the vicinity of the aerodrome".
	No doubt those wonderful expressions make us feel deeply enthused by the Government's policing activities over airports that allow a lot of noise to happen in their vicinities, localities or areas, but what do the words precisely mean in the context of Nottingham East Midlands airport, which allows aircraft to fly in and out that affect my constituents, because although they are up to 30, 40, or 50 miles away from the airport, they are disturbed by the noise?

Gillian Merron: I appreciate the representations that the hon. and learned Gentleman makes. No collusion is intended by the use of various words. I am about to move on to the reference to the consideration of local communities, but I will be happy to get back to him if he thinks that today's debate does not address his concern. We all know the intention of what we are talking about.
	A further reason why we do not accept that a blanket duty on airports is right is that the Secretary of State will be able to require an airport to fix its charges in a way that takes account of its local environmental impact. Existing section 38 of the 1982 Act gives the Secretary of State the power to direct specified aerodromes to make use of the charging power with regard to noise. That power, which will be extended to include charging by reference to emissions, is detailed in subsection (4) of proposed new section 38 of the 1982 Act. The power would be used if the introduction of noise and emissions-related charges at an airport seemed to be appropriate, yet the airport operator was unwilling to do that. I hope that that addresses the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson).

Mark Todd: Should an airport such as NEMA choose to exercise a charging regime—my hon. Friend has accurately said that it wishes to do so—would it remain within the Secretary of State's discretion to say that the charges specified were inadequate and to specify other charges that met the objectives of local residents concerned about noise intrusion? Does the point merely relate to the principle and methodology of establishing a charging structure, or does it go on to say whether those charges are adequate for the purpose?

Gillian Merron: The charging regime has to do a job, so it has regard to appropriateness.
	Amendment (a) would qualify the power of direction. The Secretary of State would be required to have regard to the interests of people who live in the area of the airport in determining whether and how to make use of the power. Our intention in moving the amendment is to acknowledge the concern of some stakeholders that the clause does not take sufficient account of the impact of aircraft noise on people living near airports. By giving the Secretary of State a duty to consider that when deciding whether to use his power of direction, we are providing an additional safeguard for the interests of the local community around an airport.
	Amendment (b) is a minor, consequential amendment which will ensure that this new provision, like the power of direction to which it relates, is devolved to the Scottish Ministers. Lords amendments Nos. 2 and 4 would affect the way in which noise and emission charges are set.
	We agree that airport operators should set noise charges that are proportionate. However, International Civil Aviation Organisation guidance already states that noise-related charges should be non-discriminatory between users and should not be established at such levels as to be prohibitively high for the operation of certain aircraft.

Justine Greening: Is the Minister aware of the extent to which noise measurement goes on? In my constituency BAA carries out no measurement of the noise impact of Heathrow. Rather than talking about an area that the airport needs to have regard to, the Government may need to be a little more specific about how large that area should be and take account of the glide path of planes as they come in to land.

Gillian Merron: I can assure the hon. Lady that we take account of the operational noise of aircraft when we consider setting noise abatement objectives, which I know are very important to her and her constituents. I emphasise that in doing so we work towards and contribute to internationally recognised standards.
	As I have already remarked, airports have been making use of the power to set noise-related charges for almost a quarter of a century. There has been no suggestion that the powers have been applied inappropriately or disproportionately during that time. We can see no justification for adding to clause 1 the requirement in the Lords amendments. Hon. Members who have expressed concerns should be in no doubt that, should there ever appear to be a problem with the charging scheme, the Secretary of State will have the power to direct an airport operator as to the manner in which its charges are to be fixed.
	I ask the House to insist on its disagreement with the Lords in their amendments Nos. 1, 2 and 4, and I commend amendments (a) and (b) in lieu.

Julian Brazier: The Government have given us something of a dilemma, because Members in all parts of the House agree that the Lords amendments are flawed. Clearly, we do not want to impose regulations on every small airport in the country. The difficulty is that they reflect the frustrations with this empty Bill felt not just in another place but among Opposition Members—and, indeed, many Government Back Benchers.
	The Minister's predecessor admitted that
	"the provisions in the Bill have been introduced specifically in response to some airports—I name Manchester airport in particular—that have made it clear that they seek legal clarification of the powers that they wish to use. Manchester airport may want to fix its charges by reference to aircraft noise or emissions, and it seeks the cover of legislation to do so. It intends to make use of the provisions".—[ Official Report, Standing Committee B, 5 July 2006; c. 6-7.]
	In fact, when we last considered these matters on the Floor of the House, on 8 May, the then Minister admitted:
	"The power to charge by reference to noise has been available to airports since 1982 and many of the larger airports already use it".—[ Official Report, 8 May 2006; Vol. 446, c. 42.]
	Tonight I shall be visiting Nottingham East Midlands airport with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier). Whatever its failings in terms of night flights, and I shall be looking hard at those tonight, NEMA has for many years been charging on the basis of noise.

Mark Todd: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct: NEMA has levied such charges for some time. I questioned the Minister because those charges have not produced the effects that many people would desire. The key element, therefore, is whether a Minister might intervene and say that a particular charging structure was inadequate for the purpose defined and set out criteria for determining appropriate charges.

Julian Brazier: Indeed, and as the hon. Gentleman knows, the Government have made a very small concession in that direction. I shall come to that in a moment.
	All this Bill does, in plain English, is confirm powers on noise and emissions that airports have exercised for many years.

David Taylor: I do not know whether the use of the term "plain English" was an attempted pun, but we will leave that aside. When the hon. Gentleman meets airport management this evening he will hear about noise-preferential routes and track monitoring, and those initiatives are to be welcomed. The airport has attempted to establish a framework whereby noise problems can be adequately measured and penalties, wherever possible, imposed. But will he be checking on the scale of the noise encountered by people in the vicinity and the level of fines collected in recent years? If he does, he will be able to set everything in context.

Julian Brazier: I assured the hon. Gentleman of that when I contacted him about my visit to his constituency, and I do so again.
	Where has the Government's policy, without the extra measures proposed by the Lords amendments, got us? They have finally admitted that they are not going to reach the target of reducing emissions by 20 per cent. by 2010, as we all knew. The Conservatives reduced CO2 emissions by 7 per cent. in their last seven years in office, but emissions are higher now than they were in 1997. The Environmental Audit Committee described Ministers as being "superficial and vague" about the environmental damage done by the Government's aviation policy.
	The then Secretary of State summarised the purpose of the 2003 White Paper as follows:
	"we have to balance those benefits against the serious environmental impact of air travel, particularly the growing contribution of aircraft emissions to climate change, and the significant impact that airports can have on those living nearby. That is why the Government remain committed that, over time, aviation meets the external costs that it imposes".—[ Official Report, 16 December 2003; Vol. 415, c. 1433.]
	In that statement we have a perfect example of what the Select Committee meant when it referred to Ministers as being "superficial and vague". This Bill is a continuation of that policy—it is empty.
	The point is that compelling airports to make charges in relation to noise and emissions would also make compulsory the purposes for which those changes were introduced—reducing noise and emissions and encouraging the take-up of more environmentally efficient aircraft. That would speed up a process that is already taking place.
	The Government are being disingenuous with both the public and the airlines. In suggesting that there was no need for compulsion, the Minister's predecessor said:
	"I am confident that airports will, again, make use of these provisions when appropriate, with no need for compulsion from the Government".—[ Official Report, 8 May 2006; Vol. 446, c. 41.]
	Much the same has been said today. Well, airports may well continue to do that. Some are doing so—after all, it is free money—but some are not. As the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) pointed out, charging carries no obligation for airports to monitor noise or emissions. There is no obligation to set targets, or to create and maintain any logical sliding scale to reward airlines for success. In fact, there is no obligation to measure, let alone report on, progress.
	What proof is there that those charges have delivered any benefit since they started? We cannot tell whether they are working, as there is not even a requirement to provide statistics. All that the Bill will do, without amendment to beef it up—and the amendments before us are all that there is on the table—is provide a bit of cover for the airports in case lawyers from airlines make trouble for them.
	The Government have made what amounts to a very small concession, which the Minister has explained. It requires the Secretary of State, should he use his powers under subsection (4), to consider the interests of people who live in the area of the aerodrome. If he were considering finally getting on with it and doing something, it is difficult to conceive of any circumstances in which he would not consider them in that context. The phrase "among other things" in the Government amendment makes a pretty worthless amendment even vaguer. However, it does at least leave open the possibility that a future Secretary of State might listen to the concerns of local people—and not just those living around airports; we should remember that flight paths extend a long way.
	The Bill has ping-ponged between the Lords and the Commons several times. It is difficult to know what advice to give, because although hon. Members on both sides of the House agree that the Lords amendment is flawed—no one wants to impose such a measure on every small airport in the country—the only way of shaming the Government into the view that they ought to take serious action is to oppose the Government amendments again.

Alistair Carmichael: I shall not detain the House long because, as the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) said, we have already been round the course once or twice, and the arguments are beginning to feel as tired as I do.
	I welcome the Minister's conversion to light-touch regulation for small airports—and, indeed, the apparent conversion of her Department. I would have been even more delighted if that had happened three years ago when I argued for exactly that approach to Tingwall airport in Shetland in my constituency, but at the time the Government argued that we could not be given different treatment because the airport was small, and it had to be treated exactly like every other airport in the country. If it is a genuine conversion I am delighted to welcome it, but if, as I fear, it is a conversion for the purposes of today's debate, I have some difficulty accepting it at face value.
	On the application of the measure to small airports—a subject near and dear to my heart, as I spend most of my life sitting in them waiting for planes to take off—I would have thought that if charges are to be set with regard to noise and emission, the charge would be zero at a small airport where no or "de minimis" noise and emissions were caused by air traffic. That would not be a particularly difficult calculation to make. That said, the hon. Member for Canterbury says that the amendment is less than perfect, and I accept that there is some force to that. Knowing the electoral arithmetic of the House, the measure will inevitably go back to the other place. Before that takes place, there may be scope for discussion, and I hope that that discussion takes place, because I really do not want to revisit the matter in the Chamber in the next four weeks.
	The question is whether what is proposed by the Government is better than what is in the Bill as presented to us by the other place. I find no suggestion that what the Government offer us is better than what the other place has sent them, flawed though it is. The simple fact is that in seeking to maintain the status quo, the Government do not answer any questions about what happens in situations such as that of Coventry and Birmingham, which has been mentioned. Coventry airport does not enforce noise and pollution controls in the way set out in the Bill, but Birmingham International airport does. I am told that as a result, many of the planes landing at Coventry airport are older, noisier and more polluting aircraft. That is not acceptable, and we ought to do something in the Bill to sort it. The Government refuse, and frankly I do not understand why.

David Taylor: Of course the amendments are flawed, and we do not want to impose unwarranted burdens on tiny airports. Nevertheless, certain points need to be made. The larger airports must be weaned off their apparent insistence on unlimited or lightly restricted night flights and their continuing acceptance of old, polluting aircraft. Certainly, BAA's comments suggest that environmental and social costs should be simply dismissed:
	"Like the Government, BAA has not sought to calculate the external costs associated with other possible environmental impacts. This is because we believe that the external costs of the remaining impacts—biodiversity, ecology, water quality, waste, heritage, road congestion—are fully internalised within the development and operating costs of aviation through the planning system."
	That demonstrates how lightly regional and national airports treat the proposals in the legislation that the Minister has introduced today. Such costs are not internalised in the planning system. If they were, there would not be so much concern about making the measure before us. The ability to create the ability to utilise noise profiles in a charging system must be compulsory.
	It is a recognised fact that there is damage to health from air pollution. Nitrogen dioxide levels are a particular concern around airports, and the Government measure acceptability against EU mandatory levels for nitrogen dioxide and other pollutants. However, adverse health impacts occur at well below those high levels. If Heathrow airport expanded, the resulting extra road traffic would result in air quality standards being breached. The Department for Transport's model shows that very high road charges would be needed to keep traffic levels down to protect people's health. Let us act before that, so that we can avoid or head off that problem.
	Noise pollution is associated with damage to people's health and their quality of life. Loud and persistent noise affects health, particularly at night. It affects children's and adults' concentration, deprives people of sleep and adds to stress. A Department for Transport consultation on night flights in 2003 found that more than 750,000 people were exposed to an average noise level of 55 dB or more over 24 hours, and 250,000 people were exposed to an average noise level of 48 dB or more at night. Noise levels at Heathrow are predicted to increase, which is why, even though the Bill is flawed, we ought to incorporate a requirement on airports.
	If we are unwilling to designate levels under the Civil Aviation Act 1982—the Minister has stated, perfectly properly, why she agrees with her predecessors about that—and if we fall back on the mantra that local agreement is best when there are planning or environmental problems associated with an airport, what will happen when local agreement breaks down? At Nottingham East Midlands airport, it has broken down—a 10-point plan imposed by the airport has been rejected by the independent consultative committee—and now we are in limbo without an environmental framework, which is quite unsatisfying.

Edward Garnier: What faith does the hon. Gentleman have in any local agreement being arrived at in our area, when the airport in question has neutered the independent consultative committee?

David Taylor: The hon. and learned Gentleman will be well aware that the independent consultative committee on NEMA has recently been restructured in ways that have not met with approval from three of the four groups represented in that organisation. I wonder whether the independent consultative committee is being taken seriously by the airport or by the Government. They argue vigorously that local agreement is all and say, "Let's not impose anything top down. Let's not use the big stick of airport designation. Let local people sort it out through that mechanism," but there is not a great deal of evidence that that is happening.
	At East Midlands airport the ICC has repeatedly tried to encourage best practice in airport operations. It recognises the importance of the airport socially and economically, as do I, but it points out that the quota count system is needed, or the system of imposing a framework for charging for night flights above a certain volume is necessary, because the airport seems unwilling to make much progress in tackling the difficulties associated with its recent rapid growth—300,000 tonnes of freight and dedicated freight aircraft. It is the largest airport in the country in that respect.
	I recognise what the Minister says about designation, but let us have some compulsion in the penalty system that is needed to curb night flights which cause so much difficulty and damage to people who live around the airport and those who live under the flight paths, as do the constituents of my neighbour, the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier).

Edward Garnier: I congratulate the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) on his hard work, not only on behalf of his constituents, which he has properly done, but on behalf of the cross-party alliance of Members of Parliament from Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire—the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) is in his place. From our different geographical perspectives, all of us have plenty to say that is not hugely favourable to the way in which the management of Nottingham East Midlands airport has treated its neighbours.
	As I have said in the House on a number of occasions, I as a Conservative Member of Parliament am entirely satisfied that the Manchester Airport Group, which wholly owns the airport in my county, Leicestershire, is entitled to make a profit, to carry out its business and to do what it can to improve the facilities and other activities that go on at its airport, be it the reception and dispatch of aeroplanes or turning itself into a retail park. However, if Nottingham East Midlands airport is to have any local credibility, it should behave as a responsible neighbour.
	That brings me back to the question to which I did not get an answer when I intervened on the Under-Secretary: what do we mean by neighbour? In the language of the Bill—I am sure all hon. Members agree that we must be entitled to seek precision in the language of a Bill—we are creating a regime that will allow private enterprises to impose penalties on commercial operators. In the making of the law, it behoves us to be precise in what we mean. In her remarks this afternoon the Minister used the expression "locality", the original Bill uses the expression "vicinity", and the Secretary of State's amendment in lieu uses the expression "area". I am hugely concerned that because the Government are in thrall to the aircraft industry and the airport industry, they will provide no more than a hollow Bill, as my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) said. The Bill is no more than a set of words that will achieve nothing to make sure that airports such as Nottingham East Midlands airport behave themselves.
	My hon. Friend and I are going to Nottingham East Midlands airport tonight—I for the second time, at least, this year. I always get on extremely well with the managing director of the airport and with her senior management staff. They are unfailing in their courtesy and politeness, but I fail to understand why it is so difficult to extract from them information and facts.
	When I last went there in August, I was told that it was not possible to extract air speeds from the machinery that monitors incoming aircraft. The aircraft are delivered by the national air traffic system from the Welwyn sector into the sector that is controlled by Nottingham East Midlands air traffic control system. We were told that the continuous descent method over my constituency and south-east Leicestershire would ensure quieter descents across my constituency. We were told that aircraft do not travel at more than 250 knots as they come into Nottingham East Midlands air traffic system.
	I now have the radar details, which tell me that, by and large, aircraft are moving into the area at speeds in excess of 250 knots, and in order to cover the distance in a safe way, land and stop travelling by the end of the runway, they have to apply the air brakes, the full thrust and so on. The noise over my constituency is enormous, relative to the ambient noise in the area. The Government, the airport, its owners in Manchester, the Civil Aviation Authority and the airline operators care nothing about my constituents and their quiet enjoyment.
	I have said many times to various Ministers, various officers of Nottingham East Midlands airport and others who were prepared to listen that nothing is done about it. The latest amendment adds still further imprecision to the wording of the Bill. I am becoming increasingly frustrated about the good will of the Government to do anything to look after the people who live in this country. The Government are concerned only to placate the airline and airport industries. I know that that is probably unfair, but it is the only inference I can draw from the evidence I have seen, from the conduct of the passage of the Bill and the people who appear to have influence on the Government.
	I shall stop now, as I know that the hon. Member for South Derbyshire wishes to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I urge the Government not to be satisfied with the use of loose language and not to hope that private enterprises such as Nottingham East Midlands airport will do anything other than let the status quo continue.

Mark Todd: I shall speak about the Government amendment and ask for a clearer explanation of how it will work. Let us suppose that residents object to the charges that an airport chooses to levy because they regard them as inadequate for the purpose—they do not, for example, think that the charges clamp down hard enough on the huge Antonovs that thunder out from the airport and want the charges raised.
	Presumably, under the amendment, the Secretary of State must find a way of determining whether to exercise his or her powers to vary those charges or suggest that they might be wrong. He or she will have to decide how to consult on the "interests"—I quote the amendment—of the local community. It is difficult to know what those interests might be. They might be the employment interests of local people, or their concern about noise or about environmental pollution of other kinds. They might have a wide range of concerns about the airport.
	By passing an amendment that is so vague about how those interests might be interpreted and determined, the Government do themselves no great favours. They must—I hope that in the brief time available to her my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to respond to this—define a methodology, first, for defining how those interests could be determined. There would presumably be consultation with local residents. As I said, the general term "interests" is used. There is no reference to concern about a particular matter.
	Secondly, there must be some methodology for determining what is a proportionate charge to levy in respect of a particular offensive act, such as causing noise or, as my neighbour the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) mentioned, nitrogen pollution. It is not clear how those powers will work, and a challenge at judicial review is not merely likely but almost certain. Unless the Government define the processes much more clearly, they will certainly face a challenge in the courts by residents in my area.
	I want to know two things. First, how will we determine what the interests of the local community might be? Secondly, how will we decide what are proportionate charges to the nuisance that is experienced?

Gillian Merron: With the leave of the House, I am disappointed by Opposition Members' approach to the Bill; their criticisms are not true. The provisions on policing and security at airports, better consumer protection and environmental measures at airports are important to people up and down the country, and it is regrettable that the Opposition have not accepted that.
	On clause 1, the Government believe that it would be disproportionate to require every single licensed aerodrome to impose noise-related and emissions charges, no matter how small or remote the aerodrome or how limited the environmental impact—I emphasise that we are not in the business of over-regulating business for no good reason.
	I was interested in the points made by the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) about the environment, which prompt the question of what specific proposals the Opposition will introduce on environmental mitigation.

Julian Brazier: Our proposals start with restoring the night cap, a point on which the Government have finally given way.

Gillian Merron: That point relates to our next discussion. I do not recognise the description, which is not accurate.
	The best way to ensure that aviation contributes to the goal of climate stabilisation is through a well-designed emissions trading scheme. At the end of last year, European Ministers agreed with the UK Government's view that emissions trading is the best way to tackle aviation emissions. The Council of Ministers has called for the introduction of a legislative proposal before the end of 2006, and I hope that it attracts support on both sides of the House.
	The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) discussed "aircraft noise getting worse". Although there are impacts, advances in technology have delivered quieter aircraft, and noise abatement operational processes, such as the continuous descent approach, have been developed.
	Reference was made to Birmingham and Coventry airports. Coventry airport is now subject to planning agreements relating to noise control and monitoring following a planning application, which the Government have approved. To put the matter in context, it is also important to note that Coventry airport has significantly fewer flights than Birmingham—in 2004, Coventry had some 14,000 air transport movements compared with 114,000 for Birmingham.
	The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland referred to his local airport, and I am glad to hear that he uses it regularly. Scottish Ministers are responsible for the regulation of airports in Scotland, because the matter is executively devolved.

Alistair Carmichael: The Minister is in danger of misleading the House. As she knows, the Civil Aviation Authority retains a great deal of power in relation to Scottish airports.

Gillian Merron: I repeat that the matter is executively devolved to Scottish Ministers.
	If the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) looks through the rest of the Bill, he may find comfort about what "locality" and "vicinity" mean. New section 38B states that the noise control scheme extends by default to a radius of 40 km from the centre of the longest runway, and the scheme can be specified by the Secretary of State to a maximum of 60 km from the centre of the longest runway. I hope that that assists the hon. and learned Gentleman.
	I have some information that may interest the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd). If somebody were to make substantive representations to the Secretary of State on airport charges, it would be considered and, as a matter of good practice, consulted upon. We would consider local interests before deciding whether to direct an airport over fixing its charge. We would keep the process and the criteria under review, and we would need to pay attention to local circumstances.
	In summary, I remind hon. Members that airports have had the power to charge for aircraft by reference to their noise for some 25 years without any need for the Government to intervene, and many larger airports already do so. Clause 1 is important, because it extends that power to allow charges to be related to aircraft emissions that affect air quality.

Charles Walker: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The second set of Lords amendments, which concerns Stansted and Heathrow airports, is hugely important to people in the east and the south-east. Will the Minister crack on and allow us at least 10 minutes to debate it?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is not a point of order. A time has been allocated for the two matters to be discussed. I think that the Minister was drawing to the end of her remarks.

Gillian Merron: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Edward Garnier: rose—

Gillian Merron: In view of the hon. and learned Gentleman's previous comments, I will not take the intervention, but I thank him for the invitation.
	Clause 1 includes powers that allow the Government to require an airport to charge aircraft by reference to noise, if they think that that will help to deal with the airport's environmental impact. It explicitly requires Ministers to have regard to the interests of people who live near the airport in deciding whether and how to use those powers. Clause 1 is not the be all and end all—it is just one tool to deal with an airport's environmental impact. As I have noted, other provisions in the Bill—in particular, clauses 3 and 4—and the existing legislation are also relevant.
	In conclusion, if there is ever a problem with the charging scheme, the Secretary of State will have the power to direct an airport operator as to the manner in which its charges are to be fixed.

Question put, That this House insists on its disagreement with the Lords in their amendments and proposes Government amendments (a) and (b) in lieu thereof.
	 The House divided: Ayes 242, Noes 131.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	 It being after one hour after the commencement of proceedings, Mr. Deputy Speaker  put the Questions necessary to dispose of the business to be concluded at that hour, pursuant to Order [8 May.]

Julian Brazier: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. May I seek your guidance? The answer that the Minister gave earlier and that she has also given informally appears to contradict the amendment paper. According to the amendment paper, the Government propose
	"That this House does not insist on its disagreement with the Lords in their Amendment No. 5, or on Amendment 11A proposed by it in lieu, and proposes the following...
	Line 1, leave out 'subsection (2)',"—
	on the night cap, as the Lords propose—
	"and insert 'subsections (2) to (4)".
	In other words, the Government appear to have conceded on the amendment paper but say that they have not. Can you offer some guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I have sufficient confidence in the procedures of this House to believe that the amendment would not appear on the amendment paper unless it were in order.

Clause 2
	 — 
	Regulation by Secretary of State of noise and vibration from aircraft

Lords Reason: 5B
	 Motion made, and Question put,
	That this House does not insist on its disagreement with the Lords in their Amendment No. 5, or on Amendment 11A and proposes amendment (a) to Lords Amendment No. 5.— [Gillian Merron.]
	 The House divided: Ayes 256, Noes 46.

Question accordingly agreed to.

WELFARE REFORM BILL (PROGRAMME) (NO. 2)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 83A (6) (Programme motions),
	That the Order of 24th July 2006 (Welfare Reform Bill (Programme)) be varied as follows:
	In paragraph 2 (conclusion of proceedings in Standing Committee), for '9th November' substitute '30th November'.— [Mr. Heppell.]
	 Question agreed to.

Climate Change

[Relevant document: A memorandum from the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry containing the Government response to the Sixth Report from the Environmental Audit Committee, Session 2005-06, Keeping the lights on: Nuclear, Renewables and Climate Change, HC 584.]
	 Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn .—[Mr. Heppell.]

David Miliband: I am delighted to have the opportunity to open this debate. Climate change is not just an environmental issue, but an economic issue, a social issue, and a security issue. It is local, national and international, and it will affect all of us, as well as all of our children, so it is right that it is now high on the agenda of all three main political parties.
	In setting the scene for the debate, I shall review the science, the international position, and Britain's response. The polls show that 93 per cent. of people are now aware of climate change. I am sure that many people think that it is a funny old world when Al Gore is making movies and Arnold Schwarzenegger is making policy, but both men are now making a major contribution to a worldwide awakening on this issue.
	The facts are more alarming, and the need for action more urgent, than previously thought. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are now higher than at any time for at least the last 740,000 years. That is resulting in an unprecedented rise in temperature at the earth's surface: globally, 10 of the warmest years since 1850 have occurred since 1990, and in the UK, spring is now arriving on average 10 days earlier than it was 30 years ago.  [Interruption.] Yes, under a Labour Government; I know that the weather is always better under Labour, but that was not the point I was seeking to make.
	The rise in temperature could push many of the great ecosystems of the world into irreversible decline, with massive economic and social costs. Two thirds of the world's population live within 80 km of the coast, and up to 80 million people's homes could be flooded each year in coastal regions by the end of the century. As the latest issue of  Scientific American puts it, the debate on global warming is over. Preventing the transformation of the earth's atmosphere from temperate greenhouse to unconstrained hothouse represents arguably the most imposing scientific and technical challenge that humanity has ever faced.

John Redwood: Even if Britain is miraculously good at controlling its carbon emissions, the fact is that we are not going to control the world's carbon emissions. As that is the reality, should we not turn our prime attention to how we protect our coastal and low-lying areas with sea defences?

David Miliband: We certainly should protect our sea defences, but many people will ask why the right hon. Gentleman has voted against increasing the flood defence budget over the past 10 years, which has happened under this Government. Secondly, his point that our emissions represent only 2 per cent. of the world's greenhouse gas emissions should never be an excuse for us not to take the action that is necessary as our contribution to addressing this global problem. However, I do want to address the international issues.

Peter Ainsworth: On flood defences, although we all agree that there is a serious problem, has the Secretary of State's Department not just cut the budget for such defences?

David Miliband: The capital budget in respect of flooding has been protected, despite the difficulties that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has in respect of that budget, and I make no apologies for protecting that capital budget. It is true that some of the annual recurrent expenditure for the Environment Agency has had to be cut, and I make no apology for saying that DEFRA will live within its means: when accountancy changes or avian flu or difficulties with the Rural Payments Agency arise, we will live within our means and we will not duck the difficult choices. However, we have protected the capital element of the floods budget and it was right to do so.

Christopher Huhne: Will the Secretary of State give way?

David Miliband: I will not take any interventions from Liberal Democrats, who have just wasted at least 15 minutes, and possibly 30 minutes, on fruitless votes that have got us absolutely nowhere.

Charles Walker: This Conservative recognises the importance of saving the global environment for everyone, but I am also concerned about our river and stream environments, which have been under huge stress over the past 20 years and under successive Governments. Every year, hundreds of miles of rivers and streams dry out. Can we act locally, as well, and try to encourage water companies and the Environment Agency to get together to ensure that these environments are preserved? If we cannot do that locally, how on earth can we reduce greenhouse gases globally? It will be an impossibility.

David Miliband: We should certainly do what the hon. Gentleman says, but I am surprised that he did not point out that we have the cleanest rivers and streams since the industrial revolution, thanks to the efforts made by some of the agencies that he mentioned. But he is absolutely right to say that this is an important issue.

Justine Greening: Is the Secretary of State aware that some 40 million to 50 million litres of untreated sewage goes into the Thames every year? Indeed, I have just received an answer to a parliamentary written question on that very issue. Does he agree that keeping our core rivers clean is incredibly important, and that Thames Water's tideway proposal would solve a lot of these problems?

David Miliband: The hon. Lady is of course right to say that raw sewage coming into the Thames is a very serious issue. Actually, the Thames is also cleaner than it has been since the industrial revolution, which is a good thing. The Greater London authority, the Mayor, the Government, the relevant environmental agencies and others are looking very carefully at the tideway proposal, and we hope to conclude the relevant studies by the early part of next year.

Peter Ainsworth: On the protection of waterways, will the Secretary of State confirm that, owing to cuts in the DEFRA budget, British Waterways is in the process of making 180 people redundant?

David Miliband: I noticed that the Press Association referred to the figure of 180—I assume that that is where the hon. Gentleman has taken it from—although I have not been able to confirm it. British Waterways' budget, which has gone up to £190 million during this year, has, I think, risen three or fourfold in the past seven or eight years. It has had to bear some of the brunt of the difficulties with DEFRA's finances and I make no apology for that.

Christopher Huhne: rose—

Colin Challen: rose—

David Miliband: I really must try to make some progress. I said that I wanted to deal with the science and to look at the international and domestic agendas—

Colin Challen: rose—

David Miliband: I am very tempted to give way to my hon. Friend, who is known as a long-standing campaigner on international issues. Since I mentioned the international agenda, I think it right that I let him intervene.

Colin Challen: I am very grateful for that little bit of praise; I hope that it is deserved. I was hoping to get us back on to climate change because, although it is very good that politicians keep their noses to the ground, this subject is rather bigger than British Waterways. Is my right hon. Friend going to review our 2050 target of a 60 per cent. cut in emissions in the light of the Exeter conference and of the most recent report by the Tyndall centre, which shows that, if our current transport appetite continues, we will have to reduce emissions by 70 per cent. by 2030 and by 90 per cent. by 2050?

David Miliband: I will deal with these issues, but I always say that we must try to achieve at least a 60 per cent. reduction in our carbon dioxide emissions, compared with 1990 levels, by 2050. There is always a danger in changing an ambitious target that has a widespread degree of buy-in and consensus. The CBI, voluntary organisations and, I think, the Opposition parties recognise the power of that 60 per cent. target, so I am slightly loth to start changing it too soon. But I recognise the value of the point that my hon. Friend makes.
	When the Prime Minister launched the British presidency of the G8 last year and put climate change, along with Africa, at the top of the agenda, he set out a three-stage process: getting agreement on the science, promoting a debate about stabilisation, and developing agreement on a long-term international framework. Let me address stabilisation, which is an important issue.
	The 1992 UN framework convention on climate change was signed not just by those Kyoto countries that are signatories to the protocol, but by 189 countries, including the United States, Australia and Canada. The convention urges its signatories to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.
	The latest science shows that atmospheric CO2 concentration has increased by more than a third since about 1750—from about 280 to 380 parts per million. The level of greenhouse gases, in CO2 equivalent concentration, is about 430 parts per million. Atmospheric CO2 levels, or equivalent, are rising at more than 2 parts per million per year. Without further action, CO2 emissions in 2050 are predicted to rise by 50 per cent. More immediately, within 10 years we will reach the 450 parts per million figure that many scientists believe would represent a shift from the balance of probability being against dangerous climate change toward its being in its favour.
	In other words, the window of opportunity for staying within a 450 to 550 parts per million range is closing. The costs of mitigation rise sharply for stabilisation below this range, and for adaptation the costs rise sharply beyond the upper limit of that range. I have not read today's report from Shell, but it speaks to this issue. The Stern review, which will be concluded in the next few weeks, represents the most comprehensive work ever undertaken in the field of climate change economics. Preliminary findings were presented in Mexico last week to the second meeting of the Gleneagles dialogue, which I attended along with the Minister for Energy, and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary.
	The evidence is clear: the cost of tackling climate change will be far less than the cost of dealing with the consequences. We have the technology to meet the challenge. Picking up on the point made earlier by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), we must find ways of getting investment across the globe in moving to a low carbon economy. That means working to develop an international framework that can secure global co-operation, plus effective domestic and European action.
	The 1992 UN convention used the language of "common but differentiated responsibilities" for all 189 signatories. Let me dwell on this for a moment. "Common" responsibilities means that all countries have to play a part. "Differentiated" responsibilities means that the greatest burden must be borne by those with the greatest ability to lead. The danger is that developing countries say that they will not play their part because the industrialised world is not promising to play its part; meanwhile, developed economies refuse to move because they suspect that developing countries will not take the action necessary.
	The Government's strategy to break this logjam is as follows. First, in Mexico last week we presented compelling new evidence on the economics, and I think that Ministers from all the 17 countries that attended left Mexico realising that "business as usual" is not an option. Secondly, we pursue bilateral agreements with key countries to deliver change on the ground now. On Tuesday, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and his Indian counterpart signed a memorandum of understanding to add to work with China, Brazil, South Africa and—famously—California, in order to take action in the immediate future to mitigate future climate change.
	Thirdly, we are proud to see the European Union as a big part of the answer to the climate change problem. I say in all seriousness to the Conservative party that the battle against climate change requires a strong European Union; it is not possible to be an environmentalist and a Europhobe at the same time. This problem crosses borders and requires international action.

Christopher Huhne: rose—

David Miliband: Given that the hon. Gentleman was a Member of the European Parliament, and since I have mentioned Europe, I should probably break my vow and allow him to intervene.

Christopher Huhne: I am grateful to the Secretary of State. Does he agree that the Kyoto agreement, imperfect though it is, would not have happened without the pressure of the European Union, and that the Conservative party should take that into account in formulating its climate change policy?

David Miliband: I do not want to intrude on the private grief that has caused a divorce between the two main Opposition parties and broken the consensus that we were told would exist between them; they have now sundered all co-operation. But I am happy to be an intermediary for messages from the hon. Gentleman to the Conservatives, and to relay to them his concern that they should wake up, smell the coffee and realise that the European Union is part of the solution, not the problem.
	As I was saying, the climate change problem crosses borders and requires international action. The Government will continue to press for a strong and integrated European response to climate change. I can report to the House that the European Commission action plan on energy efficiency will be launched next week. The sustainability pillar of the Lisbon competitiveness strategy needs to be strengthened, and the British Government will argue for that. Common agricultural policy reform must continue to emphasise the need to improve the net environmental benefits of farming. The extension of the EU emissions trading scheme needs to be taken forward later this year, and of course, the EU needs to continue to negotiate at international level for us, starting in Nairobi next month.

Betty Williams: I want to latch on to the phrase that my right hon. Friend used about energy efficiency. I also raised this matter in business questions this morning. I am sure that he will have noticed how warm it is in the Palace of Westminster this week. Will he have urgent discussions with the House authorities on this? We should practise what we preach and do our bit here in the House of Commons.

David Miliband: I am sympathetic to my hon. Friend's point, and I will certainly take up the matter with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House and with the appropriate authorities thereafter. I shall not make any jokes about hot air.

Lynne Jones: On practising what we preach, I would like to point out to colleagues that, yesterday and today, I have turned off about 10 lights in the Lady Members' Room downstairs.

David Miliband: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am not sure where this is going. The debate is probably intended to be looking at the bigger picture.

David Miliband: Wherever the debate is going, I can assure my hon. Friend that I shall not be going to check on what she is doing.
	I was setting out the strategy that the Government are pursuing to ensure that the international agenda is followed. The fourth point is that we must take a lead in developing the clear and tangible targets from all developed countries that are necessary to kick-start the drive towards a global agreement on climate change. For countries such as the United Kingdom, that means achieving at least the 60 per cent. target to which we are committed. For the European Union, it means exploring with other parties reduction pathways in the order of 15 to 30 per cent. by 2020, and 60 to 80 per cent. by 2050.

Alan Whitehead: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

David Miliband: I hope that my hon. Friend will bear with me. I am conscious that about 15 Members want to participate in the debate, and I am worried that I have already gone on for 15 minutes. Let me try to move on.
	As well as those four measures, we need a fifth, which I believe will receive common support across the House. We must support the most vulnerable developing countries in adapting to the unavoidable effects of climate change now. As the UN meeting in Nairobi sets out on the task of developing a new global framework on climate change, we must help developing countries, especially in Africa, to cope with climate change today. I take heart from the comments that were made on this issue in Mexico last week. I also commend the White Paper of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development, which has sustainability as a theme running right through it, rather than simply a chapter on the subject.
	Climate change is a global problem that requires global leadership, but our strength internationally relies on our commitment at home. We are one of the few countries on course to achieve its Kyoto protocol target. Our greenhouse gas emissions could fall to around 23 per cent. below 1990 levels by 2010, which represents nearly double our target of a 12.5 per cent. reduction. But we need to go further, not least in respect of carbon dioxide itself.
	This year, we have taken significant steps towards strengthening our domestic programme on climate change. First, the measures set out in our climate change programme review are projected to deliver 12 million tonnes of carbon savings within the next four years. This includes savings from the second phase of the European Union emissions trading scheme. That might sound like a technical matter, but it accounts for nearly half of all carbon emissions in this country. This summer, we submitted our proposals for the second phase of the EU emissions trading scheme. It will be expanded to cover additional activities at 160 installations, responsible for nearly 10 million tonnes of carbon.
	Alongside this, we are pressing for reforms to the EU emissions trading scheme to extend its coverage and secure its long-term future. Representatives of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development came to Mexico last week. They said that what they needed above all else was long-term certainty on the commitments of the developed countries to the carbon market. That is what we believe that the reform and extension of the EU emissions trading scheme should do. The scheme should also include aviation, which would enable the industry to meet its environmental costs through a mixture of emissions reductions within the sector and purchase of reductions that can be produced more cheaply by other sectors.
	The Budget presented by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor set out a raft of important measures on car taxation, biofuels, microgeneration and, significantly, energy efficiency.

Judy Mallaber: rose—

Adrian Bailey: rose—

David Miliband: I will give way in a second.
	Those measures included an extra 250,000 subsidised installations of home insulation over the next two years. This builds on the £320 million of investment this year through the Warm Front programme, which is helping constituencies right across the country, and the energy efficiency commitment, which has delivered net benefits to households in excess of £3 billion over the last three years.

Judy Mallaber: My right hon. Friend mentioned biofuels and microgeneration. What is his view on the extent to which we should give a competitive advantage to renewable sources of energy, and on how we should achieve that? There seems to be a difference of opinion between the parties on whether we should give specific additional help in the marketplace to those sources of green energy.

David Miliband: I think that my hon. Friend is referring to the renewables obligation, which is a significant piece of subsidy for the renewables industry. I will say a bit more about that later. The significance of the renewables obligation is that it ensures that those renewable technologies—tidal power or offshore wind power, for example—that are not yet close to market are given the research and development and other investment that is essential.
	I was disappointed that the Conservatives' energy review stated that they wanted a level playing field between nuclear and renewable fuels. For the avoidance of doubt, the Government's position is that nuclear has a role to play, but in an unsubsidised form. The public subsidy should go towards the non-nuclear renewable technologies that are so important. I hope that the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) will address that point later.

Adrian Bailey: We have done an enormous amount of good work on renewable energy, but the one area that we have neglected is the potential renewable energy that is locked into the ground. We are considerably behind certain other countries in developing ground source heat pumps and geothermal techniques, for example. Will my right hon. Friend undertake to examine the potential for providing heat for our homes from this renewable source?

David Miliband: I can address my hon. Friend's point directly. The third strand of work that I have taken over in the past few months is the energy review, which promised a fourfold increase in the commitment to renewable energy through a strengthening of the renewables obligation. It also promised higher levels of support for newer technologies—I think that that is relevant to my hon. Friend's point. That is in addition to existing measures to incentivise renewables, including £500 million of funding—separate from the renewables obligation—for a range of support programmes for emerging technologies.

Madeleine Moon: When the Minister looks at renewable technology, will he also consider other sources of carbon emissions, such as landfill? In my constituency, a company called Inetec is using food waste and packaging to create energy that is often utilised for combined heat and power units. That process diverts food waste and packaging from landfill sites and provides a good source of heat and energy of the kind that we could utilise even in this building. Would my right hon. Friend consider visiting my constituency to see the work of that company?

David Miliband: That is a very tempting offer from my hon. Friend. I think that I shall be in Wales on 9 November, so I shall look at my programme to see whether I shall be in her part of the country. She makes an important point about anaerobic digestion, and I know that the process has also been considered in relation to the waste strategy review. Many comments have been made about it, and we hope to introduce some arresting proposals on it.

Peter Ainsworth: I want to correct the Secretary of State on a point that he made a few moments ago about the Conservative party's position on nuclear power. It is not the case that we are proposing to subsidise the construction of new nuclear capacity. We have said that we want a level playing field across all technologies, and that nuclear should be a last resort.

David Miliband: As it happens, I have a copy of a speech by the Leader of the Opposition, and I should like to quote from it to elucidate this point. It states:
	"There must be a level playing field for renewable and decentralised energy to compete on equal terms with nuclear power."
	That is not the position of the Government. We believe that the £1 billion subsidy that will be going to non-nuclear renewables by 2008 is an important part of a balanced energy mix. We do not believe that that subsidy should go towards the nuclear industry. The Leader of the Opposition says that he wants competition on equal terms but, in our view, that is not the right position. The playing field should be slanted towards the non-nuclear renewables when it comes to public money.

Gregory Barker: The Leader of the Opposition also clearly and unequivocally said that nuclear power should be the last resort. Is that the Government's position?

David Miliband: The Leader of the Opposition is facing in a number of different directions at once, but—

Gregory Barker: Answer the question.

David Miliband: I have no fear of answering the question, perhaps unlike some Conservative Members. That is not the Government's position. We do not believe that nuclear power is a last resort. We believe that if we wait 15 years to find out whether we need a nuclear capacity to help to balance the energy mix and pull down carbon emissions, it will be too late.
	We believe that the first job is to cut energy demand, the second is to promote energy efficiency and the third is to promote renewables. Then, if there is still a gap, and we have a choice between oil, gas and nuclear, I say, standing here as the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, that as we all agree that climate change is the biggest problem, there is no answer other than to say that nuclear will have to play a role in tackling this international problem.

Andrew Smith: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. Just to press the point, is it not clear from what the Opposition Front-Bench spokespeople have said that they are committed to removing the marketplace advantages that Labour has given to renewables? That removal would be disastrous for the future of renewable energy in this country.

David Miliband: My right hon. Friend is an extremely distinguished former Chief Secretary and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and he has zeroed in exactly on the point. There is a subsidy, which is £600 million to £700 million, and it is going to non-nuclear renewables.  [Interruption] The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) says it is not working. The only reason it is not working is because planning permissions are being opposed by his own Front Benchers. I will come to that, but the subsidy for onshore wind power has been a fantastic boon to the renewables industry. We have 4 per cent. of our electricity mix from renewables because of the subsidy.
	Let us dwell on the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Smith). We on this side of the House are determined to ensure that, if there is to be new investment in nuclear energy, it should pay its own way. It should not be subsidised from the public purse or by the consumer. The renewables obligation is designed to do precisely the opposite.
	We say that those renewable technologies, especially those that are not close to market, deserve special subsidy. That is the point of the renewables obligation. That is what the Conservative party, in its own words, has said that it wants to take away. If that is not its intention, I suggest that the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle explain it. He will have more time to do so in his speech. If he needs more time to look at the policy and realise the contradictions, fair enough as well, but the policy as stated—the level playing field, on equal terms, between nuclear and non-nuclear renewables—means the end of the subsidy for non-nuclear renewables.

Philip Dunne: rose—

David Miliband: If the hon. Gentleman will let me, I should now finish. His Front-Bench colleague, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle, has time to make his own speech, whereas I have overextended mine. The hon. Gentleman has already had one go, and I am sure that he will make the winding-up speech, so he will have his own shot at this.
	Let me conclude on the energy review.  [Interruption.] The Government are happy to talk about policy; unlike the Conservatives, we have some coherence in ours. The energy review also set out a revolutionary change in the basis of energy supply regulation, so that companies are incentivised to conserve energy rather than supply more of it. It set out a scheme to target the emissions of the 5,000 public and private organisations, such as Tesco and the BBC, that are medium-level emitters. That is worth 1.2 million tonnes of carbon, and it has also set out an increase in the renewable transport fuel obligation to more than 5 per cent. after 2011.
	I am pleased to confirm to the House the continuing progress in the battle against waste and for recycling. Many hon. Members will have been struck by the extension of kerbside collection—90 per cent. of the country now has kerbside collection of recycling, which is unique in the European Union.
	The latest provisional figures, published today, show that households in England recycled 27 per cent. of their waste last year, which is more than four times as much as under the previous Government. The target was 25 per cent. and the figure, although unaudited, is 27 per cent. That target has been met and exceeded.
	To pick up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Conwy (Mrs. Williams), the Government need to show a lead in their own operations. We have already introduced carbon offsetting for central Government, ministerial and official air travel. Earlier this year, I announced a pledge that the Government office estate will go carbon-neutral by 2012, which is the equivalent of taking 150,000 cars off the road.
	Recently, I also announced the partnership for renewables, which will mobilise up to £500 million of investment to catalyse the expansion of the public sector renewables, producing up to 500 MW of renewable electricity. The Leader of the Opposition has called wind turbines "giant bird blenders". We call them a major spur to renewable energy, and we support them.
	I know that many hon. Members are interested in the question of legislation on climate change. I understand that and welcome the debate. The Government have said in the climate change programme review and, more recently, in the energy review that we are looking carefully at the merits of introducing a carbon budget as a means of helping to deliver our goals. The only issue for the Government is whether the legislation would help in the battle against climate change, support the efforts to join individual activity with business and Government leadership, and link domestic and international action.
	I caution that legislating for targets is not the same as legislating the means to achieve them, and it is the means to achieve them on which we will all be judged. Consensus on goals is important, but without effective policy there is no effective response. However, I want to underline the fact that we are looking carefully at the idea of legislation. The issue for us is not whether to legislate, but what form legislation should take and how it could be organised.
	Climate change requires change right across society—from Government, individuals and business. I am proud that this should be the first Government to set a long-term goal for carbon reduction consistent with the science of climate change; legislate for a climate change levy; meet and tighten the caps under the European emissions trading scheme; establish insulation and energy efficiency programmes, delivering more than £700 million of investment into homes each year; and be recognised as a world leader on climate change.
	All those changes have met with scepticism, and some with opposition, but they were right. Now we need to go further—in some areas, much further. We will do so, and I look forward to receiving support from across the House.

Peter Ainsworth: I begin by congratulating the Secretary of State on securing this important debate on our return this autumn. It is good to have a debate on climate change in Government time, and I am sure all Members appreciate it.
	I also thank the Secretary of State for, in the most part, introducing the debate thoughtfully and consensually. He outlined the international dynamics very clearly indeed, and also outlined the scientific knowledge and the risk involved. I do not think that there is any serious doubt in the House on those issues, nor on the need to start to address those matters with a degree of urgency.
	The starting point for any sensible debate on climate change is that it is for real and that it is happening, and the consequences will be with us for some considerable time because of the inertia effect on the earth's atmosphere. There are still some people who say that there is not a problem or that mankind is not contributing to it, but I find those arguments irritating, not least because people who express those views set themselves up against well-established, internationally recognised scientific opinion, which is either courageous or foolhardy, depending on one's point of view.
	The problem is that every time such arguments appear, they muddy the waters of public opinion and make it harder for Governments here and around the world to take action of the sort that we in the House know will be needed. In any case, CO2, which is the chief problem we are dealing with, is a pollutant. It cannot be good, under any circumstance, whatever beliefs people have about its contribution to climate change, to go on pumping billions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.
	I am afraid that I have no time for climate change deniers. Nor do I have time for those, and there are some, who say it is all too late and that, in the words of Private Frazer, "We're all doomed!" There is a moral duty on politicians, of all persuasions, to work together, with urgency, to tackle this most serious threat that we face. It is the biggest challenge—I have said this many times over many years—facing this generation of politicians.
	We still have time, just, to rise to that challenge. But we need to be realistic too about the fact that we are starting from a pretty bad place. UK climate change emissions have been rising, and it is argued that if the UK's share of international aviation is included, our climate change figures are higher than they were in 1990.
	As we pick our way through the wreckage of failed and discontinued initiatives, half-hearted incentives, broken pledges and missed targets, we must, surely, confront the fact that a different order of effort is now needed.

Paddy Tipping: I do not want to be critical of the hon. Gentleman, who has a good record. He has just called for consensus, but if he looks back at the last paragraph of his speech he will see that he is not following his own rules.

Peter Ainsworth: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point, but we need to be realistic about where we are starting from. Whatever the politics of the matter, successive Governments have not achieved the progress that we all would like to have been made. I could have made the cheap point—which I am now going to make—that carbon emissions were falling under the Conservative Government and have risen under Labour. That is not really the point, however. The point is that we are not starting from a good place, and we all need to be realistic about that.
	Incidentally, I agree with the Secretary of State about the nature of the challenge. It is not just some other environmental problem but a major social problem and a huge threat to international security and the economic well-being of the world. Of course, the poorest people in the world are likely to be hit hardest and first. The United Nations has said that 150 million people in the world are already climate change refugees. If we do not tackle the issue globally, I fear that all the well-intentioned efforts behind the millennium commitments and the attempts to make poverty history may prove to be in vain.

David Drew: I share the hon. Gentleman's view of the threat that we face. If we are serious about how we deal with it, however, surely there must be some call for direct controls on what we all do, particularly on how much we use the car. Would he be in favour of that? I know that we can talk about new technology and alternative ways of using the car, but surely we must recognise that we must use the car less, if at all.

Peter Ainsworth: I sympathise with the hon. Gentleman's point, but to say that we cannot use the car at all is not to engage with the real world. We are all aware of the need to take the public with us, step by step, on a journey towards a low-carbon economy. The sort of radical measures that he suggests are not deliverable within the time frame that we must consider. In any case, the car is capable of reform through the application of new technologies to help to reduce the problem of carbon emissions. Aviation is another issue on which I might comment later.

Emily Thornberry: Is it Conservative party policy that we use the car less, or that we use a different type of car? Is the hon. Gentleman in favour of putting different types of cars on the road, or should we simply encourage the public to use cars less?

Peter Ainsworth: Ideally, I am in favour of both approaches. An awful lot of car journeys are unnecessary and cover very short distances, and we support the extension of differentiated rates of vehicle excise duty to send a clear signal to consumers. We are also in favour of the provision of information to enable consumers to make rational choices to reduce the impact of road transport on the environment.

David Taylor: The House holds in high regard the hon. Gentleman's reputation and track record on environmental issues. However, many people have doubts about the policies of his party, not least because when renewable energy developments are proposed in particular localities, Conservative politicians who represent those areas tend to be the first to jump into the breach against such proposals. How can we treat seriously his commitments from the Conservative Front Bench? If we are not careful, the best symbol for his party might be a disconnected wind turbine, to show that what is on offer is just empty spin.

Peter Ainsworth: First, the hon. Gentleman will know that individual Members of Parliament have a duty to represent their constituents' interests where they are affected by infrastructure projects of any kind. Conservative Members are perfectly at liberty to take a view about proposals in their own constituencies, but that does not affect Conservative party policy. Secondly, Liberal Democrat Members also have a slight problem in this regard, and the reason that we and the Liberal Democrats may be more affected is that wind turbines tend to be sited in large rural areas with hills, which, on the whole, tend to be represented by our parties rather than by the Labour party. It is essential that the wind energy industry is sensitive to landscape and does not propose developments in places where there will be a clear impact on landscape, biodiversity or any other environmental consideration. One of our arguments with the current support for renewables is that it has tended to put money into large onshore wind farms, which are naturally controversial in those areas where they are proposed. In the long run, that is not helpful to securing renewable energy in this country.

Jeremy Hunt: Is my hon. Friend as frustrated as I am that so many questions about Conservative policy are being asked when the Secretary of State's speech included nothing of substance about the precise measures that the Government propose to ensure that we reach our Kyoto targets, in an environment in which our CO2 emissions are increasing?

Peter Ainsworth: I thank my hon. Friend. Of course, I am always happy to answer questions about Conservative policy.

Adrian Bailey: Bearing in mind the hon. Gentleman's earlier comments about taking people step by step, I was astonished by his comment, as I interpreted it, that Conservative Members are entitled to oppose their party's policy on energy conservation in their constituencies. Does he agree that that is a strange way of taking people step by step?

Peter Ainsworth: I do not really see the point that the hon. Gentleman is making, but perhaps our liberal Conservative party has a less overbearing whipping system than the hon. Gentleman enjoys in the Labour party—[ Interruption.] The Secretary of State says from a sedentary position that it is Stalinist. Let us leave that on the table.
	The question is: what do we need to do? First, we need to change the mindset. We need to change the way that the Government think about climate change. Incidentally, I welcome the establishment of the Office of Climate Change. I query, however, whether just one office with 15 people in it will be resourced sufficiently and, more importantly, will have the clout across Government to make the sort of changes that we need, although I guess that it is a step in the right direction. Famously, the Prime Minister said that he wanted the environment to be at the heart of policy making. We must do that. It is not just about making policy, however, but about the way in which the Government do business. As the Sustainable Development Commission pointed out last year, carbon emissions from the Government estate have increased by 8 per cent. since 1999.
	Were the Government to divert a small proportion of their massive procurement budget towards encouraging sustainable technologies and products, it would make a huge difference to creating critical mass in such emerging markets. I urge the Secretary of State to take that message away and make even more effort than I know that he is making to use the mighty arm of Government spending to lever in real improvement. I note that just one Department—it is the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—has, for example, allocated any money from its building budget to micro-power generation.

Nick Hurd: On greening government, on which, under my hon. Friend's stewardship, the Environmental Audit Committee has been strong for several years, will he confirm my understanding that the latest contract from Government, the gigantic DHL outsourcing contract, does absolutely nothing to green government any further?

Peter Ainsworth: I am afraid that I can confirm that. I hope that the Secretary of State or the Minister who winds up will clarify that that is exactly the sort of issue in which the new Office of Climate Change will be involved—making sure that when other Departments issue contracts they take sustainability and the environment into account.
	The need to change the mindset in Government is one of the reasons why we are supporting a new climate change Bill in the forthcoming Queen's Speech—a Bill that would set statutory interim targets to ensure progress towards at least the 60 per cent. target for 2050 on which we all agree. It would also establish an independent body to monitor the science of climate change and make recommendations in much the same way that the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England does. [ Interruption] Indeed, as the Secretary of State notes from a sedentary position, we need a decision-making body, not just one capable of recommendations—not decisions over policy but over the trajectory and the direction of travel and what we need to do to meet the threat. Policy should be left to politicians.
	In a climate change Bill, we would also wish to see an annual report to Parliament so that Ministers are truly accountable for their actions in that regard. I was very interested to hear what the Secretary of State had to say about that and it sounds as if he is giving thought to making encouraging proposals along those lines. I hope that he will do so, when he does, in a spirit of co-operation and open dialogue, because it will be important to reach cross-party agreement on the way forward.

Colin Challen: I add my praise for the hon. Gentleman in his role as Chairman of the Environmental Audit Committee and for being a good parliamentarian on these issues. I make the same point to him as I made to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, which is that the science and the analysis are pointing in the worst direction possible and we will have to go beyond the 60 per cent. target by 2050. If we are to have new legislation, surely it should be framed in such a way that we are not necessarily bound to a figure that is then overtaken at a later date, as the science improves. Will he commit his party to that approach so that we can move with the times, instead of presenting to the public as an established solution something that will not actually solve the problem—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. May I point out to the hon. Gentleman and the House that long interventions are not helpful, especially when the Member making them is seeking to catch my eye a little later?

Peter Ainsworth: As we are in praise mode, let me add to the heap of praise showered on the hon. Gentleman by the Secretary of State. The hon. Gentleman has a distinguished record on this issue and he makes a fair point. It would be the purpose of the independent body that I have mentioned to assess and evaluate the science consider the shifting evidence and make authoritative pronouncements about what we need to achieve as a society to reduce the risk of climate change.
	A climate change Bill, if and when the Government get round to introducing one, would also show that they are taking a lead. It would help the public to make the changes that they will need to make if they can see that the Government are taking the matter seriously and legislating to discipline their own activity. We look forward to a forthcoming announcement on the subject.
	There is so much more that we could be doing. We have already heard mention of energy efficiency, which is the no-brainer option in this debate, but we are still building homes that fail to live up to decent standards of energy efficiency. We need much tougher ecological building standards. Some 43 per cent. of houses tested by the Building Research Establishment in a recent trial failed to meet existing building standards despite having an energy performance certificate.
	We need to do much more to make people aware of what they can do to reduce energy use and save money at the same time. Some 8 per cent. of all electricity consumed in our houses is for things that we are not actually using at the time. If every conventional light bulb in our homes were replaced by an energy efficient light bulb, the total demand for electricity would fall by 3.5 per cent. So there is much more that we can do.
	We can also do more to promote decentralised and community-led solutions. We need to rework the tax system so that it forms part of our armoury in the fight against climate change. On that front, the Government started well. The statement of intent on environmental taxation in 1997 committed the Government to shifting the burden of tax from goods to bads and implementing the polluter pays principle. Figures from the Office for National Statistics, released today, show that the shift has gone the other way. Environmental taxes, as a percentage of total tax and social contributions, have fallen from 8.3 per cent. in 2004 to 7.7 per cent. in 2005. The percentage was lower still in 1997. We need to get back on track with the tax system as part of our armoury.

Alan Whitehead: In the context of environmental taxation, does the hon. Gentleman accept that capping and trading carbon emissions is a development from taxation, in which the market undertakes the work that taxation might otherwise do? Would he include in his analysis what is happening to European emissions trading and will he be active in ensuring that the emissions trading system 2008 to 2012 really works?

Peter Ainsworth: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who also has a distinguished track record on these issues. He makes a good point and I am coming to that subject in a moment, if he will bear with me.

Adam Afriyie: In the spirit of consensus, does my hon. Friend share my concern that the climate change levy, of which the Government have been so proud, is actually a tax on energy use rather than a direct tax on carbon emissions, and may not be having the effect that it could if it were otherwise framed?

Peter Ainsworth: I am grateful for the opportunity to comment on that point and I agree with my hon. Friend. The climate change levy has been a moderately useful instrument, but it does not do what it says on the label and we propose replacing it with a carbon levy that would reduce carbon emissions rather than being solely a tax on industry's use of energy.
	Tax is not the only solution, as the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) points out. We also need carefully targeted regulation. I know that it is not conventional for Conservatives to talk positively about regulation, but I do so in the sure knowledge that progressive industry is crying out for clarity and new regulations that can unlock markets—

David Miliband: Watch out behind you!

Peter Ainsworth: I am well aware of who is behind me. I am merely repeating what I have been told by senior representatives of UK industry. They are looking for clarity in the regulations. We probably have too many regulations. They also lack clarity and can be conflicting. Properly targeted regulations can unlock markets, provide the certainty for investors that industry seeks and drive new, clean technology. Technology is also part of the solution, but it cannot do it on its own. It needs politicians to provide a positive framework in which it can flourish.

John Redwood: I hope to move my hon. Friend on from the slightly difficult passage he has reached in his speech . [ Laughter. ] Does he agree that one of the reasons we have too many transport emissions in this country is the complete absence of adequate network capacity? We have planes stacked for up to half an hour flying over London burning fuel when they should be able to land. Planes on the ground, waiting to get on a runway to take off or to find a place to park, may spend 15 or 30 minutes with main engines running. Would not it help if we had adequate road and airport capacity so that we did not burn fuel unnecessarily?

Peter Ainsworth: I do not know whether my right hon. Friend is aware of the work that is being done to encourage the continuous descent procedure for aircraft, which could dramatically reduce noise and climate changing emissions—

David Miliband: The right hon. Gentleman knows about continuous dissent.

Peter Ainsworth: It is good to see the Secretary of State in such a jolly mood.
	In the past, much of the green movement has had it in for capitalism and it is a fair cop, in that it is as a result of unbridled capitalistic activities over 200 years that we have ended up in the mess that we are today. Capitalism is the most powerful force for change on the planet. It is essential that we harness industry's imagination, creativity and investment power, as well as its abilities in design and technology, to help us get us out of the mess that we are in.

Rob Marris: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Madeleine Moon: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Peter Ainsworth: I cannot, as I must make progress.
	In that context, I turn now to emissions trading which, as the hon. Member for Southampton Test (Dr. Whitehead) said, certainly has a part to play. It is unfortunate that the EU's scheme has gone awry—mainly because of how it was structured in the first place—but that does not undermine the principle of using emissions trading to drive down carbon emissions. I welcomed what the Secretary of State had to say about what he was doing in that regard. We very much support more auctioning of permits to pollute, and want to get away from the type of back-door negotiations that have resulted in a system that is not working. We want more transparency in these matters.
	As for the EU, I confirm that, although the Opposition can disagree about the euro, the constitution or some of the regulations that the EU produces, we have no doubt that it has a crucial role to play in climate change. It is the biggest market in the world, its buying power has an enormous capacity for good, and it is also a major voice in world affairs. Of course, therefore, we must work closely with our EU neighbours on climate change.

David Miliband: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman's flow, and I am delighted by what he is saying. Does he therefore believe that the European Commission should be given the power to set national caps for the EU emissions trading scheme? Is that the sort of integration that he has in mind?

Peter Ainsworth: That is a good question. The matter is being actively considered in my party's policy review process, although it has not yet been resolved.
	We must redouble our efforts to forge a genuine international agreement to succeed the Kyoto process. I believe that that agreement should be based on an international trading system that is fair, equitable and effective, and able to meet the needs of the developing world, the rapidly developing world and the developed world. That is a big ask, but I am glad that the Government are on the case and I was interested to hear the Secretary of State's report from Mexico.
	No speech on climate change would be complete without reference to aviation—

Barry Sheerman: Before the hon. Gentleman skates over the question of regulation, will he give way?

Peter Ainsworth: I thought that I had dwelt on regulation rather extensively, but I give way to the hon. Gentleman.

Barry Sheerman: Does the hon. Gentleman admit that the antipathy that many of his colleagues exhibit towards Europe means that they oppose any European regulation? The example that I would give is the landfill tax: does he agree that we would have got nowhere with that without European standards and regulation? Is he using his Front-Bench position to say that he now embraces that sort of regulation?

Peter Ainsworth: For a start, the landfill tax is rather a bad example, as it was introduced by a Conservative Government. Secondly, Conservatives have always been prepared to regulate. As far back as in Disraeli's time, the public health Acts cleaned up the River Thames, and I have no doubt that men in stovepipe hats told the then Prime Minister that that legislation would be a terrible burden on business. Similarly, a Conservative Government introduced the clean air legislation in the 1950s—[ Interruption.] I do not see any stovepipe hats in the Chamber this afternoon. We are not at all afraid of regulation that is targeted, carefully structured and able to create opportunity. The hon. Gentleman might be interested to learn that, only earlier this week, Conservative Members of the European Parliament voted to toughen the regulation relating to the substitution principles in the REACH directive. That gives a clear signal about our strong commitment to use regulation to improve the environment and the health of everyone.
	I had just begun to speak about aviation—in my view, the hardest nut to crack in the whole issue of climate change. There is no technological quick fix and it is, by nature, international, but that is not an excuse for ignoring it in the official statistics on climate change. We must recognise and face up to its impact, so of course we must include it in the EU emissions trading scheme and in the existing emission reductions target. In addition, we should look at restructuring air passenger duties, for example, and bear down on emissions rather than passengers.
	Climate change is the greatest challenge facing this generation of politicians, worldwide. If we are to rise to the challenge, we must put aside politics as usual, and work together. Our door remains open, to the Secretary of State and to the spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, if either of them wishes to come and talk openly about climate change and about how we can meet the challenge together. We will not succeed, nor will we earn the public's respect, if we continue to bicker among ourselves. We should start by recognising that this beautiful, fragile earth has natural limits, to which we are all subject whether we like it or not, and we have a frighteningly short space of time to start living within them.

Joan Walley: As other Members have said, it is most important that Parliament is debating climate change—and on only the fourth day back. Our debate has mobilised the local radio station in my constituency, BBC Radio Stoke, to cover energy issues on its morning programme during the whole of next week. I hope that our proceedings today will encourage such debates all around the country. I particularly look forward to the Secretary of State's contribution to those radio programmes next week.
	Our debate today is an opportunity for us to congratulate everybody who is doing so much to put climate change at the top of the agenda. Only if we all act together can we respond to the challenge of climate change. If we ignore that challenge, we will leave our grandchildren, and even our children, to suffer the consequences.
	I want to flag up the work of the Environmental Audit Committee. I am sure that everybody agrees that when it was set up 10 years ago our understanding of environmental degradation was nowhere near as wide as it is now. Our Select Committee has really tracked climate change and I pay tribute to the work of the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth), who now speaks for the Opposition, as former Chair of the Committee.
	Our Committee's reports on green government, on the pre-Budget reports, on education for sustainable development and on "Keeping the lights on" have helped us to focus on the targets and actions needed, as well as on the gulf between words and action. Through Parliament, the Committee has helped to maintain and to inform the debate. As we move on to the next, urgent stage in tackling climate change, we should be looking at what extra role this Parliament and Parliaments across the world can play to keep world leaders focused on tackling climate change.
	The fact that the general public—our citizens—can now easily access the Committee's reports and use them to inform themselves, their colleagues and neighbours, at work and at home, about the changes that we shall all have to adopt and to engineer means that there is a new way of bringing home to people a simple truth. We all have to find new ways of tackling the challenge of climate change—not only world leaders and national leaders but leaders in every community.
	I am pleased that this debate coincides with the Committee's decision to publish quickly, on Monday, the Government's response to our most recent report; we felt that Parliament should have the benefit of the report this afternoon. Anybody reading the reams of detailed, wide-ranging, technical and, in places, passionate written and oral evidence received by the Committee will instantly be able to catch up with issues that often seem complex and with which the Government have to grapple within an extremely restricted time frame. As we have already heard, we have only a short time to meet the challenges of climate change. It is as though we are speaking at five minutes to midnight—or even later.
	Our report acknowledges the unprecedented change in the energy policy landscape and the sharp rise in public interest in energy supply and energy security against the backdrop of rising prices, while climate change is the most pressing issue of our times. It is for Government to lead us through all the contradictions, but they can do so only if the public are aware of, and understand the bigger picture. A constant theme in all the Committee's reports on the issue is the need for leadership, so I applaud our Government and our Prime Minister for the leadership that the UK has shown and continues to show nationally and internationally.
	We are shaping the international framework. We have already heard about the follow-up to the G8 summits at Gleneagles in 2005 and St. Petersburg, and meetings have recently taken place in Mexico. Our Government are helping to create consensus among the big polluters, although I do not know whether we can achieve one across the Chamber. We have heard about the bilateral treaty that was signed with India. Today, Parliament must endorse all the international initiatives, and we must support Ministers as they approach the Nairobi meeting next month. I am also pleased that we may have representatives from the Environmental Audit Committee at that meeting as well, to support what is being done.
	Action on the world stage must be matched by leadership in our own country. It is important to have a foolproof way to deliver year-on-year commitments to reduce carbon emissions. We must turn our attention to what we can do, and how and when we can do it. I therefore want to add my support for the pleas to include a climate change Bill in the forthcoming Queen's Speech. However, a climate change Act would not be the be-all and end-all—the single magic solution—to reducing carbon emissions. Quite simply, there is no single, simple solution.
	As well as systematically preventing CO2 emissions, we must all make unprecedented changes to the traditional way of running our economy and living our lives—something that has been touched on in the opening speeches. The Government are right to promote energy efficiency seriously, to support new green technologies and to transform procurement policy. I should like to add my support for the procurement policy issue that was picked up by the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth), because the Government could be doing far more about that.
	We need to consider revised planning guidance. We want to make the comprehensive spending review an unapologetic driver of sustainable development. We need to do all those things at the same time and with urgency. But most of all, we need to have the backing of the British public in all those changes, and we need to do far more to find out how we can get them on board.
	I shall quickly deal with the legislation on energy policy that is expected to be presented to the House in the coming months. It will provide an important opportunity for Parliament—both in the House, in the Chamber and in Committee, and in the other place—to debate how we can make the changes that we need. We have heard a lot of reference to how the UK met its Kyoto targets early, but we did so as much by chance as by design: we were very much able to take advantage of the dash for gas.
	We should beware of a false sense of security because emissions are on an upward trend, as we have heard. That could jeopardise the medium-term target of 60 per cent. cuts by 2050. Of course, as we heard in the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Rothwell (Colin Challen), the more science and understanding that we have, the more we know the scale of the problem and the quicker we may need to go, perhaps even more quickly than the 60 per cent. cuts. We can only do that if we all understand the bigger picture. Once we start a journey, the more distance we cover, step by step, the more we can see just exactly where we need to be.
	I should like very briefly to dwell on the role of nuclear energy. I do not feel that the Minister for Energy, who is based at the Department of Trade and Industry, has set out how the new nuclear build needed to replace the generation of reactors that is being phased out can be in place by 2010. The Sustainable Development Commission, which is the Government's own adviser, noted that nuclear power will make little contribution towards reducing carbon emissions before 2020.
	The then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, who appeared before our Committee, acknowledged in his evidence and supplementary memorandum that it was likely to be 2018, at the very earliest, before nuclear capacity in a new form could be in place. The issue for the Government is that, as things stand, there is no institutional framework to guarantee investors secure returns over the long term, and I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will look at that in the coming months.
	Turning away from energy policy at the DTI to other Departments, I am pleased to see the lead that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is taking in ensuring that other departmental policies are consistent with our climate change policy, but the problem is that such things never happen quickly enough. I should like to ask whether the Government can do more to resolve the issues that have been flagged up by the Companies Bill, which the House will debate next week, and to find out what they can do to respond to the requests for environmental reporting, which we need if we are to keep tabs on what is happening.
	Looking at the framework for sustainable development in respect of the Government estate, which was introduced in 2002-03 and flagged up in earlier Environmental Audit Committee reports, we can be really proud of the aspirational target that the Government have set to become carbon-neutral by 2012. That is going to make a big difference. I would like the Minister to put his energies into seeing what can be done to extend that further, so that rather than excluding the NHS and the education estate, it could extend beyond Government offices. I would like the greening government targets for operational management of Departments to apply right across the board. The Lyons review is looking at ways to relocate Departments from London and the south-east. There are huge opportunities to integrate all that.
	I want to flag up the issue of private finance initiatives and how they are being used. I am pleased that the Minister of Sport and the Government have pledged that the 2012 Olympics are going to be the greenest ever. We should take a leaf out of that book in respect of PFI and the design, construction and maintenance of each and every new building around the country. It is clear that we are embarking on a major programme of house building, as well. High standards will be needed. As we have already heard, we could go so much further. We could look at Treasury rules in respect of whole-life costing so that financial appraisals take account of the full costs—capital and revenue—and the extra investment that is needed now will not be ruled out because there is not the maintenance and the revenue money to pay for it.
	There are also the issues raised by the built environment professions. I want to flag up the Royal Institute of British Architects and its "Manifesto for Architecture", which was recently published. I share its hopes for the Government's code for sustainable homes, which I acknowledge has been strengthened. The issue is that the code remains voluntary, apart from houses built by English Partnerships or the Housing Corporation. Pressure needs to be placed on the commercial housing sector to raise building performance standards even more.

Martin Horwood: Does the hon. Lady therefore support the Liberal Democrat policy to make the code for sustainable buildings compulsory and to include microgeneration in every new-build home?

Joan Walley: Irrespective of who is putting that forward, I certainly support progress on microgeneration in every home, and I take the point that we need to strengthen the code. I accept what the Minister for Housing and Planning has said about the need to bring business on board, but that goes back to the issue of regulation. Businesses need certainty. They need to know what distance they are going to have to cover in the medium and long terms. In that sense, codes for sustainable homes can play a key role in letting everybody know where they have got to be and what they have got to do to reach that target.

Roberta Blackman-Woods: Does my hon. Friend accept that planning regulations are key to delivering high-energy conservation buildings and that the local development frameworks that are being put together by local councils are important and need to do more to produce environmentally friendly buildings?

Joan Walley: I could not agree more. That is a key issue for us. Even if the Government are making progress with new technologies and the local planning frameworks, if professionals on the ground—experts with specialist knowledge—are not linked into the local planning frameworks, we are likely to miss out on a whole generation of new buildings being built with innovative practices embedded in the planning procedure. There is also a huge amount more that could be done to commercial buildings and public buildings, such as schools and hospitals, to take on board all those issues. I hope that the Cabinet Office can help with extending the new building regulations. As we have heard, it is not just building regulations that need to be improved. We can have all the building regulations in the world, but if they are not properly enforced and construction workers are not applying the standards, the energy will be going out through the walls. All that urgently needs to be tackled.
	Much of this often seems to be technical, rather than necessarily appearing to be relevant to people in their everyday lives. Hon. Members thus have a moral duty to take the debate out into their constituencies because real change needs to happen from not only the top down, but the ground up. Attitudes must change at a local level, and hopefully we will be able to encourage and support everyone in their endeavours to go green, whether they are people involved in local strategic projects, local planning and local area agreements, or those who simply wish to extend their homes or to move to new homes.
	A meeting that I organised in my constituency showed that we in Stoke-on-Trent could learn a great deal from best practice. We heard that places such as Nottingham and London have been transformational through the climate change strategies that they have put in place. I would like areas throughout the country to be equally transformational.
	Chatterley Whitfield, a former colliery, is at the gateway to my constituency. In 1937, it became the first ever colliery to raise 1 million tonnes of coal in a year. The emissions that were produced by burning that coal, along with all the other carbon emissions produced throughout the country, are coming back to haunt us. However, I hope that we in Stoke-on-Trent can rise to the energy challenge and address how we can improve public awareness, deal with heat loss from buildings and fuel poverty and work with industry through the emissions trading scheme; work is being done in Europe to get agreement.
	We have a real opportunity to bring about the changes that are needed in towns and cities throughout the country. I hope that the time spent in the Chamber today will be used to help to bring about the changes that are desperately needed.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Several hon. Members are hoping to catch my eye. Although Mr. Speaker has not imposed a time limit on speeches, I hope that hon. Members will exercise some self-discipline when making their contributions and thus enable more to catch my eye.

Christopher Huhne: I congratulate the Secretary of State on finding Government time, albeit perhaps abridged, to discuss this absolutely crucial matter. I am delighted that it is clear that there is consensus across the House—including even the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), who has left the Chamber—that climate change is accepted science. Forty-eight Nobel prize winners writing to the Bush Administration cannot be wrong. Indeed, the editor of  Science was recently quoted as saying that rarely in science is a consensus as strong as it is around the view that there has been man-made global warming. Of course, the intergovernmental panel on climate change has done exceptional work and we look forward to seeing the fourth assessment report soon.
	As I have examined the matter over the past year, I have been struck, as I know that the Secretary of State has, given several of his remarks, by renewed evidence that the problems created by global warming are accelerating, such as the movement of glaciers. For example, the Jakobshavn glacier in Greenland is moving by 113 feet, whereas previously it moved by only inches in a year. In Antarctica we have seen the destruction of a substantial ice shelf the size of Turkey—or the size of Texas, as they prefer to put it in the United States.
	At home, we can see that the situation is worsening by considering something as relatively mundane as the Thames barrier. The barrier has been raised 55 times in the past five years, but was raised only 12 times in the previous five. We know about the situation affecting the railway line from Dawlish to Newton Abbott in the west country, on which I travelled recently when visiting one of my hon. Friends' constituencies—and my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) might become the first person in the history of the House to lose his constituency, or a very substantial part of it, to the encroaching sea. We have drought in the Thames Water area. We experience flooding, and rapid downpours lead to water running off concrete and baked soil. Insurance claims are mounting rapidly, which is an increasing source of concern to the Association of British Insurers.
	On that point, I ask the Secretary of State to consider what to do about the remaining climate change deniers, who include multinational corporations. Although ExxonMobil, for example, no longer denies global warming outright, it funds institutions and websites that do. Judged by its actions, not its words, it is a climate change-denying organisation, and it has been treating some reputable bodies pretty badly. I said recently that the Royal Society had pointed out that ExxonMobil was still funding climate change-denying organisations such as the International Policy Network and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The IPN is the organisation whose executive director, Mr. Morris, popped up so long ago with a poisonous and personal attack on Sir David King, the chief scientific adviser, as having no status in the debate because he was not a climate scientist. I do not know how much ExxonMobil thought that nasty bit of attempted character assassination was worth, but Mr. Morris ludicrously described Sir David as
	"an embarrassment to himself and an embarrassment to his country",
	and the Royal Society calculates that overall ExxonMobil spent $2.9 million on such outfits last year alone.
	The Royal Society's letter says that
	"ExxonMobil last year provided more than $2.9 million to organisations in the United States which misinformed the public about climate change through their websites."
	Exxon's director of corporate affairs, Mr. Nick Thomas, rang me and said that the author of the letter to ExxonMobil had left the Royal Society. I asked whether he had been sacked, and Mr. Thomas said that he could not possibly comment, but it was clearly significant. The implication was left hanging in the air. When I checked, I found that Bob Ward, the senior manager at the Royal Society, had been promoted into another job. The Royal Society is standing by every word that he wrote, as it made clear in a subsequent press release attempting to deal with internet rumours.
	I ask the House: should we be buying fuel from people such as ExxonMobil? I do not want even indirectly to be helping to fund bodies such as the International Policy Network and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. I do not think that the Government should do so either, if only as a tribute to the sterling work of Sir David King, so I hope that Government procurement of fuel oil no longer uses Esso or Exxon. ExxonMobil is surely the irresponsible and unacceptable face of capitalism, to borrow a phrase. Perhaps Ministers could tell us what they propose to do, if only to protect the reputations of their own distinguished employees.
	The climate change Bill, which has been mentioned by a number of Members, has been championed by Friends of the Earth, and we are very pleased to give our support to the Bill and to the commitment to annual emissions reductions. We have to watch the average figures and make sure that weather events are not going to blow us off course. I agree with the hon. Member for Morley and Rothwell (Colin Challen) that we may well need to be more ambitious than the 60 per cent. cut currently pencilled in for 2050. I agree also with what the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) said about the need for independent monitoring, not, I hope, as a way of deciding policy, but certainly as a way of informing it and making sure there can be no doubt, among Members and policy makers, of the impartial assessment of the scientific community.
	We must remember always that targets are only the first step to a solution. They have to be credible. Frankly, if targets were the way to better government, this country would be the best governed in the world because one thing with which this Government cannot be reproached is failing to multiply the number of new targets. We need also to talk about practical policies.
	At an international level I would like to hear more from the Secretary of State and his colleagues about how we will press on with the agenda that they were outlining at Monterrey. For example, was it not disappointing that, as I understand from press reports, the Russians were not present? What can we do as a European Union to make sure that the Russians are on board? Nevertheless, like the Secretary of State, I firmly believe that we can tackle the issue, if only because a mere 20 countries out of nearly 200 in the United Nations are responsible for 80 per cent. of carbon emissions. We can gather the key people around the table, and we can ensure that they address the problem.
	There is a serious difficulty with the developing world, because of the nature of the problem. Contraction and convergence, to which our party is committed, deals with the flow of carbon emissions into the atmosphere, but not with the stock already there. Of course, the stock is the key factor, as CO2 has a life of 100 years once it has been emitted into the atmosphere. The developing world can legitimately turn round and say that 70 per cent. of all the man-made CO2 currently in the atmosphere originates from the developed world. What proposals do the Government have for dealing justly and equitably with that issue? There is much merit in Jagdish Bhagwati's proposal for a super-fund, which could help to fund a technological generation jump in the third world and is worth considering.
	Closer to home, the Government like to talk the talk, but they are far from being effective and joined-up in their own policy actions. I shall give five examples of how disjointed and dysfunctional the Government have become. First, it is universally recognised that green taxes—taxes on fossil fuels and the machines that use fossil fuels—are part of the solution to global warming. The emissions trading scheme is crucial, but it covers only a little under half of all emissions from the UK. Even if we extend it to aviation, as we should—I agree with the Secretary of State, and I would like to know whether the Government are in favour of extending it to shipping and road freight, too—substantial parts of the economy would be left outwith the emissions trading scheme.
	That is why taxation is the way to bring incentives to bear on people's behaviour. A Nordic Council report, which I recommend to anyone who needs a little help getting to sleep at night, is excellent on the subject of economic instruments. Under this Government, we have been going backwards since 1999 on green taxes, which have fallen from 3.6 per cent. of gross domestic product to 2.9 per cent. last year—I prefer to use that figure.

Emily Thornberry: Surely the point of green taxes is to change behaviour, but the revenues from a successful green tax will decrease. Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that the congestion charge is an example of a successful tax from which income has fallen, because fewer people are driving into central London? Why is the Liberal party's central economic policy based on such peculiar economics?

Christopher Huhne: I can assure the hon. Lady that it is not peculiar economics at all. The reality is that often an ongoing tax, with an ongoing change in price, is needed to bring about an ongoing change in behaviour. We find that with traditional sin taxes, such as tobacco tax, and indeed with the congestion charge. There is no real conflict of the sort that she suggests; one can, for example, calculate what the behaviour of car buyers will be in response to what happens on vehicle excise duty. The Energy Saving Trust—and, I believe, the Department for Transport, but the Secretary of State will correct me if I am wrong—commissioned work from MORI that suggests that our proposals, which we introduced during the Finance Bill, and for which we voted for recently at the Liberal Democrat conference, would help two thirds of new car buyers to achieve lower emissions. Clearly, that would still leave a substantial amount of revenue, and I am grateful to the hon. Lady for pointing that out, as it means that we can direct that revenue towards lifting the low-paid out of income tax altogether and cutting the income tax burden.

Alan Whitehead: Does not the hon. Gentleman accept that cap and trade taxes are used not only in Europe but, in other circumstances, in the UK? Examples include the landfill allowance trading scheme and packaging regulations. To some extent, renewables obligations are a version of that tax, too. If he is making claims and calculating figures about taxes, surely he should include the quasi-tax represented by buy-outs from those arrangements, as against the trading that reduces any buy-out obligation. Does he accept that the principle of cap and trade, along with taxation, is a good domestic mechanism for ensuring a reduction in climate change as well as an international one?

Christopher Huhne: I strongly agree that cap and trade schemes are superior to straightforward taxation. They provide an ongoing incentive to companies to continue and deepen their saving of carbon emissions, for example, in the case of climate change. If we can develop those schemes, that is clearly a preferable option to straightforward taxes. However, despite the Secretary of State's dalliance with the idea of personal carbon allowances, it is recognised across the House that we must deal with these issues extremely urgently, and the current state of technology does not allow us to move to personal carbon budgets or to introduce cap and trade schemes outside the areas where such schemes operate at present. The hon. Gentleman is right in principle, but in practice there are difficulties.

Nick Hurd: The hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) spoke about the evidence supporting the purpose and effectiveness of green taxation. If a constituent of mine can fly to Malaga for a weekend for £30, how much additional tax is required to change that behaviour?

Christopher Huhne: The hon. Gentleman knows that at the margin one can calculate elasticities on the basis of performance. When that is done, there will be an effect at the margin. In English, that means that some people's behaviour will not change, but enough people's behaviour will change to take off the growth. On aviation, one of the key issues that we must face is that if the sort of growth that we are discussing takes place, in a short time we will not be able to indulge in any form of activity that emits carbon other than aviation. There is clear evidence that if the price of goods or services is increased, demand is reduced.

James Duddridge: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman's elasticity will enable him to express an answer in pounds and pence, which is what my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd) was looking for.

Christopher Huhne: The proposal that we have advanced is to change the air passenger duty. When the Conservative Government introduced air passenger duty, they made no estimates of its likely impact on the growth of passenger numbers, but clearly there was some. We are suggesting that we abolish the air passenger duty and restructure it so that it is a duty on the emissions of flights. We proposed a package of £8 billion extra in green taxes overall. I am happy to deal with that in more detail later.
	The first area that shows the lack of joined-up government is the Treasury. The Government have been going backward on green taxes. That is a crucial part of the explanation for the rise in carbon emissions since 1997. The second area in which policy is dysfunctional is public spending. The DEFRA budget overruns in farming are one-offs, but the Treasury is still insisting on cuts in DEFRA's budget—for example, in flood defences and the maintenance budget for flood defences, as the Secretary of State admitted earlier. When we know that one of the effects of climate change is rising sea levels and more extreme storms and weather events, that seems little short of irresponsible madness. There is clearly an appropriate degree of concern from the Association of British Insurers about that, given the understanding that the ABI reached with the Secretary of State's predecessor about covering households that were to benefit from the introduction of flood defences, but may now be deprived even of the proper maintenance of those that already exist.
	The third area that demonstrates a lack of joined-up government is public expenditure within the Department of Trade and Industry. The fact that the Government, through the Natural Environment Research Council, are closing the centres for ecology and hydrology—in particular, the centre at Wool in Dorset, which I recently visited—is extraordinary given the importance of that centre's work in understanding the impact of climate change on biodiversity in the United Kingdom.
	A recent article by Chris Thomas and his colleagues in one of the leading scientific journals projected that 18 per cent. of all species sampled would be, as the article somewhat euphemistically put it, "committed to extinction" on currently projected levels of global warming. There is a clear need for the Government to address that issue, because we need to maintain the expertise that has been built up at centres such as Wool, and the long data sets of natural phenomena, if we are to understand the impact of climate change.
	My fourth example concerns the Department for Communities and Local Government, which—I hope that this is contrary to the advice of the Secretary of State—is planning no fewer than 108,000 new homes on flood plains. That is a crazy policy, given the likely impact of climate change.
	The hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) has mentioned procurement, so I will not labour the point. However, I will mention the Chancellor of the Exchequer's extremely high-handed abandonment of the operating and financial reviews in the current Companies Bill.
	There is no evidence that there is an effective Cabinet Committee, let alone an effective Cabinet, on global warming or climate change. Does such a Committee meet? Who chairs it? Should the chair be the Deputy Prime Minister? How will it be made far more effective in linking the efforts of the Government on climate change? And is there anybody other than the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs who is committed to the agenda?

David Heath: May I give my hon. Friend a small example of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing in government? As he knows, I am enthusiastic about microgeneration for small-scale hydroelectric plants in old water mills. No abstraction licence for water is required at the point of generation, which is good, but somebody has decided that an abstraction licence is required for water to enter the mill race from the stream, despite the fact that the water returns to the stream further down its length, which has resulted in a huge extra charge for microgeneration plants. Does that make sense to my hon. Friend?

Christopher Huhne: It certainly does not. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point. Perhaps Ministers will look into the matter and remonstrate with the Environment Agency to sort out the problem.
	Given the situation, it is not surprising that the Government have been missing their climate change targets and meeting others only by accident. As I have said, carbon emissions are up, but the only reason why we are still just meeting our Kyoto targets is the accident of the dash for gas, which was not Government policy. Because we generated electricity from natural gas rather than coal, greenhouse gas emissions from the generating sector fell by one quarter.
	If we are to take the challenge of climate change seriously, which we must, the lurching, lolloping policy must stop. Instead, we need a systematic policy framework for all the areas of Government that affect climate change: on transport, we need green taxes such as vehicle excise duty; on aviation, we need to change air passenger duty into an emissions charge; and on households, we need ambitious new building regulations, which is the responsibility of the Department for Communities and Local Government.
	We need a household energy efficiency scheme that works better than DEFRA's Warm Front. Warm Front has done a few more than 1 million homes, and the pace is so slow that it would take 125 years to reach all the UK's current homes, which belies the urgency of reducing carbon emissions from the residential sector. In terms of businesses, we have already heard from other hon. Members about commercial property.
	It is crucial that we become much more ambitious in moving forward. I have mentioned in particular electricity generation through renewables. Nuclear power cannot fill the gap or stop us becoming more dependent on natural gas on a 10 or 15-year view, so for heaven's sake let us not pretend that it can. Let us invest in the renewables that will ensure that we are not writing an open cheque to investors in nuclear power plants.
	Since the Secretary of State asked from a sedentary position whether I agree with him rather than with the Conservatives, I have to say that Liberal Democrats agree with neither. We do not believe that nuclear has a part to play in the energy generation future of this country. Anyone who thinks that that is an implausible prospect need only look at what is happening in Germany and Sweden. I would particularly commend to the Secretary of State Sweden's objective of not just a non-nuclear but a non-fossil fuel future. It is time for the Government to raise their sights and ambitions a little in tackling what they say, rhetorically, is the most important policy challenge of our time.
	As for joined-up Government, the aid budget at the Department for International Development needs to be reshaped. Adaptation is urgent, particularly as regards sub-Saharan Africa, in some of the poorest countries in the world. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office needs to regard that as its top priority, as a world interest that is also a British interest. If we can exercise any influence on the Administration of George Bush—which will, after all, be there for another two years—please let us do so, but first and foremost the Government need to get their own act together. All the evidence is that we suffer from a lack of joined-up government in this respect, and that is a measure of the Government's failure on climate change.

Colin Challen: I hope that today we will see the end of a long retreat from Rio. That sounds a bit like a Bob Hope film, but in this case the tears will not be of laughter but only of pain. We should remind ourselves of what was said at Rio in 1992. In articles 2 and 3 of the United Nations framework convention on climate change, it was agreed that we
	"must achieve a stabilisation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system".
	It called for a system that would benefit
	"present and future generations of humankind, on the basis of equity"
	and said that
	"the developed country Parties must take the lead in combating climate change"
	while
	"the share of global emissions originating in the developing countries will grow to meet their social and development needs."
	Almost every country in the world—about 180, including the United States—signed up to that. It is a matter of great regret that we seem to have lost sight of some of those original principles.
	Let me introduce a note of cross-party consensus by saying that it is a greater matter of regret given what our Prime Minister of the day, Margaret Thatcher, said three years before Rio. I will not make a habit of quoting from her, and I know that Conservative Front Benchers cannot do so nowadays because they have been told that they are not allowed to use her name in any speech. She said:
	"The environmental challenge that confronts the whole world demands an equivalent response from the whole world. Every country will be affected and no one can opt out."
	Those words were true then and they are true today.
	As I said, we have experienced a long retreat from Rio. We have engaged in a great many displacement activities. After the conference in Monterrey in Mexico, we still talk of a lack of consensus on how to tackle climate change. Human beings often engage in displacement activities when they cannot deal with the big problem that faces them. Some Members present may have involved themselves in tidying up the house and hoovering the carpet rather than dealing with the great issue that confronts them in their lives. To a certain extent, that is what we have been doing these past 15 years in terms of climate change.
	We should not be so uncritical when we consider some of the activities in which we have been engaging. When we consider the role of markets in tackling climate change, we should ask ourselves a few questions about their effectiveness. I believe that they will be effective, but only if we have a framework-based set of markets, not a market-based set of frameworks.
	I commend an excellent report, "Carbon Trading", by the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, which was recently published on the internet. It provides a detailed analysis of markets and their role in tackling climate change. It states:
	"According to Vincent de Rivaz, Chief Executive of EDF Energy in the UK, 'the long-term price of tradable emissions allowances is too uncertain to be a driver of systematic technological change in an industry whose generating capacity investments must be planned over 30-year periods.'"
	We are not even considering such time scales. The European Union emissions trading scheme operates over five years and the first review of it started only one year after it began.
	Some of the prices in other markets have swung enormously. The report states:
	"The price of the right to emit one pound of nitrogen oxide zoomed from USD 0.13 in 1999 to USD 37 in July 2001".
	Are we going to try to create a stable framework to tackle climate change on that basis? We should study markets carefully before fully embracing and uncritically accepting them as being capable of dealing with the problem on their own.

David Drew: Given that my hon. Friend is the undoubted expert on climate change in this place, apart from Front Benchers, I listen to him carefully. We have had the debate in private and in public. There must be alternatives to markets, which can achieve only so much. I would always argue that we must have direct intervention, and only the state can do that. The state must be open and transparent about what it expects from its citizens, businesses and communities. Why cannot we be open about that? Why cannot we demand of people that this generation should not fetter the next? That has never previously happened in the history of mankind.

Colin Challen: I am grateful for that intervention. The simple answer is that we are afraid of being booted out and replaced by a Government who are not prepared to confront that issue. We must have framework-based markets. I agree with the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) that capitalism is the most powerful force for change in the world. Whether that should be the case is another matter—I shall not go down that route. We must tell capitalism how to respond and not simply try to replace it, because we do not have the capacity to do that.
	Some of the issues must be tackled through a global framework. Contraction and convergence has already been mentioned and I want to dwell on that for a little because I introduced a Bill on it last December. Contraction and convergence form the framework in the articles of the United Nations framework convention on climate change—UNFCCC—that I mentioned earlier. There are many objections to a single global framework for tackling climate change.
	A recent Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs report, which responded to the continuing Environmental Audit Committee inquiry into the post-Kyoto frameworks, stated that we could not have a single framework and that it was impossible to achieve. There are one or two samples of attempts to understand the reason for that sort of psychology. The Prime Minister said at a G8 climate change conference in November last year:
	"It is because people fear some external force imposes an internal target that is going to restrict your economic growth."
	That could be an objection to some sort of global framework on which we all agree. Some people, perhaps especially in the United States, believed that it would be a straitjacket on the development of their economies.

Martin Horwood: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the expertise and leadership that he has shown on the matter. What is his view of the problem, which we face in constructing that global framework, of western developed countries now effectively exporting their manufacturing capacity to countries such as China, thereby imposing a greater carbon emission burden on them?

Colin Challen: It is one of the sad realities of the world that, when the Doha development round collapsed and pushed back any hope of achieving the millennium development goals or a fair trading system, it showed the great disconnect between the liberalisation and globalisation agenda and that of climate change. There is no connection whatever between those two parallel tracks. There was no connection between Hong Kong last year and Montreal—no discussion, no cross-fertilisation of ideas. The EAC conducted an inquiry into that subject, and what we have discovered so far is rather depressing. In the WTO, the environment is sidetracked, outflanked all the time and is treated as almost an unpleasant little add-on that will prevent the WTO from achieving its objectives. However, the two issues must be addressed hand in hand. That would deal with some of the issues raised.
	There is another kind of objection to contraction and convergence. A World Resources Institute report, "Navigating the numbers: greenhouse gas data and international climate policy", states:
	"International agreements predicated on equal per capita emission entitlements are unlikely to garner consensus."
	It goes on partially to explain why, but ends by stating:
	"However, it is important to note that the implementation of virtually any national or international climate change policies is likely to have the effect of promoting a convergence in per capita emission levels over time. Considering that over the long term net emissions must fall to zero, convergence is a corollary of climate protection."
	That is a statement of the bleeding obvious. It is logical and rational. Why have we been running away from that logical, rational position for the past 15 years? We as politicians ought to address that, and—in the light of an earlier intervention about how to face up to the electorate—we should take on board the radical thinking that is now perhaps beginning to be taken up as the mainstream thinking, and welcome proposals such as the personal carbon allowances scheme or domestic tradable quotas, which was the subject of a Bill that I presented two years ago. We should look into such matters very seriously.
	We should look into matters such as the new carbon-reducing scheme for individuals of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, and into the carbon rationing schemes that people throughout the country are voluntarily starting. I recently visited such a scheme in Oxford. Such schemes are gathering pace. People are not waiting for us to do things; they are doing things themselves.
	In terms of the markets, we are putting too many eggs into one basket. If that basket were called contraction and convergence, I for one would be very much more confident that it would achieve some success. I am a strong supporter of the contraction and convergence framework, and I hope that the Bill that I presented last December will eventually be taken up by DEFRA, in the same way that I feel that, to a certain extent, the Secretary of State has taken up the issue of personal carbon allowances.
	If we were to have personal carbon allowances—a radical policy—some people would say that we were telling the electorate that they have to make a great many sacrifices. As those Members who have already signed up the "25/5 challenge" of the all-party group on climate change to reduce carbon emissions by 25 per cent. in five years will know, the sacrifices do not hurt very much—in fact, people do not even notice some of them. We could go down that route, but it would need support. That relates to my final point: the need for a cross-party consensus.
	This year, I visited all three party conferences—I might not make a habit of doing so. I escaped as quickly as I could from the Tory and Liberal Democrat conferences at Bournemouth and Brighton to get back to the warmth of Manchester. However, if we are to tackle this issue seriously, we need a cross-party consensus. I have a copy of the report that the cross-party group produced. Three very distinguished but totally independent people wrote it, and a great deal of evidence was submitted. If we do not have a consensus, I do not see how we can put in place the policies that will tackle the problem. As I have said, that problem is now being described in much starker and harsher terms than even the talk of 60 per cent. by 2050.
	A Tyndall centre for climate change research report was commissioned by the Co-operative Bank and Friends of the Earth. It talks about figures in respect of carbon emissions: 3 per cent. per annum is a big ask, but even if that is compounded it is insufficient to tackle the problem that we face. It also talks about between 6 per cent. and 9 per cent. per annum, and that is predicated on our doing the biggest part of the job early—instead of waiting until 31 December 2050 and then having a big shutdown in carbon emissions. That means that the policies required go far beyond a bit of taxation, a bit of regulation and a bit of market intervention. It means that we will have to do things that some of our voters will not thank us for. I hope that we will progress with talks on a consensus, and build a bridge before we drive the policies across. We should proceed on that basis.

Nick Hurd: I welcome this debate and my contribution will focus on three aspects of this extremely broad and complex issue. The first is Britain's role, about which we need to be clear. Secondly, I want to press the Government, and clarify their position, on a specific element of the international dialogue that appears to have been neglected: the response to the fact that approximately 20 per cent. of global emissions result from the human activity of destroying trees. Thirdly, I want to return to the issue of cross-party consensus. Greater minds than mine have worked on this issue, which seems to be extremely important, notwithstanding the current healthy competitive tension between the parties as they attempt to "out-green" each other.
	On Britain's role, Mrs. Thatcher was right—there, I have said it—to say that there is no national solution to climate change. The fundamental challenge is how to build consensus around a stabilisation target that is credible and supported by robust science, and how to engage the global community in getting on the road map to achieving that target. Since the superpower of today and the superpower of tomorrow are in a temporary stand-off on this issue, the leadership function falls, in a very timid way, to the European Union.
	My personal view is that it is entirely right for Britain to seek a leadership role. It is important to establish that point, because one hears voices—I hear them in my constituency—saying, "Why are you banging on about this subject? It is all about the United States and China." It is not, and not least because of the point made by the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne). We are not 2 per cent. of the problem. Given that carbon molecules stay in the atmosphere for 100 years, we are significantly more than 2 per cent. of the problem. There is a strong moral case to be made for British leadership on this issue. Our society has prospered on the back of easy access to cheap fossil fuels, and the price is being picked up by the poor countries. That is the reality—if one believes in the theory of human impact on climate change—and the moral case for British leadership on this issue.
	The second argument for British leadership is that we are very well placed to lead because of our diplomatic relationships and skills base, and because of the credibility of the climate science rooted in this country. Thirdly, such leadership would be to our advantage. We will doubtless witness in our lifetimes a step in the transition toward a low carbon economy. The winners will be those at the vanguard of that movement, and Britain has the opportunity to be there. It is in our economic interest to be a leader in this process.
	The Prime Minister gets this and has taken a lead on the issue. Such leadership has been defined to date by rhetoric. To say that is not to disparage him, because words are important in moving this issue up the global agenda. The other element that defines his leadership is the 60 per cent. target, which is ambitious. The problem with it is that no one believes that we are going to hit it, so the credibility of our leadership is being really tested, and we need to re-examine the key pillars of that leadership.
	As a developed economy and one of the leading economies in the world, we have the opportunity to prove the principle of green growth, by which I mean the principle that one can significantly reduce emissions without sacrificing economic growth. We were well teed up to do this because of the dash for gas—whatever the motivation for that—but the awkward fact is that carbon emissions have risen since 1997, as people are noticing. We are in danger of squandering our opportunity. Energy efficiency and conservation are at the heart of our response and carry with them significant economic opportunities for this country, such as the ability to enhance our competitiveness in an age in which fossil fuels are likely to get more expensive, rather than less.
	If we can prove that point, we have the opportunity to transform the international debate, which is proceeding at the pace of the least willing. We have to prove the principle of green growth and shift the debate from one that focuses exclusively on risk to one that also entertains the possibility of opportunity. That could be invaluable in triggering the gear change that, as previous speakers have said, is needed.
	The second element must involve broadening the coalition of the willing and changing the frame of the debate. Until now, climate change has been spoken of in isolation. It has sat in a kind of silo of thinking, but the more we look at it, the more we see that it is absolutely interlocked with the biggest geopolitical issues of our age. It is absolutely interlocked with energy security, with access to water and food, and with growing concerns for security linked to the migration of peoples fleeing the impacts of climate change. It is also interlocked with issues of poverty alleviation and the treatment of chronic health inequalities around the world. The more we can stitch concerns about climate change into these issues, the greater will be our chance of broadening the coalition of the willing to deal with it. The British Government have a crucial opportunity in that regard.
	The third pillar is one on which the Secretary of State tried to make mischief—the leadership role in Europe. I take a Eurosceptic position on the value of the euro to this country and on the process of ever-closer political union, but I can reconcile that position very comfortably in my mind with a strong desire to see Europe becoming much more effective in doing what it says on the tin in relation to promoting more effective action on issues that cross borders.
	The reality in Europe is that, although some economies are much more advanced than ours in promoting renewable energy—I believe that the Minister has more experience of this matter than I do—we must recognise that opinions on the European emissions trading scheme vary enormously. That extremely important initiative, which was a result of Kyoto, is none the less fragile, and the British Government, as a leader in Europe, must be at the forefront of the drive to build on the initiative and not to sacrifice it. We must take our partners with us on that. The development of market instruments such as the emissions trading scheme and the clean development mechanism is likely to be at the heart of the solution, not least in regard to correcting a market failure—the inability to price carbon effectively. The lack of an effective price for carbon underlies the apparent failure of the first phase of the emissions trading scheme to drive innovation and change.
	The second opportunity for Europe will be to ensure that the single market grows the market for new technologies and raises product standards. The more we do that, the cheaper those technologies will become as they are deployed. Europe has an enormous opportunity to do that and to reach bilateral agreements with significant players in the global warming debate and to encourage them to engage with climate change. I very much welcome the initiatives that the Government are taking through agreements with places such as China. We need to see the details, and the results, of those agreements, but the initiative is the right one. However, the European Union has much greater weight than we do as an individual nation in helping to bring the big polluters to the table. From my perspective as a Eurosceptic, that is what I believe Europe should be about, and I want to encourage the Government to be at the forefront of that process.
	Moving on from the role of Britain, I should like to press the Government on an issue that I mentioned earlier. It is striking that almost 20 per cent. of our carbon emissions come from deforestation—a broadly similar proportion to that in the United States. In theory, we can control the practice, as humans are responsible for it. In theory, too, that should be cheaper than restructuring the way in which we produce, distribute and consume energy, although I think that we shall have to do that as well. However, the global community is slow to grasp that opportunity, even though it ought to be pretty close to the top of the list of cost-effective actions that we could take.
	I am aware that the rain forest nations have put together a proposal for conservation credits. The implementation of such a proposal would be fraught with difficulty, but it is an attractive theory that is entirely consistent with the EU principle of paying farmers to maintain the environment. I have some experience of this matter, having lived in Brazil for five years. The harsh reality is that deforestation of the Amazon is being driven by a very hard dollar for soya and for beef, which are exported principally to Europe. However, there is no equivalent hard dollar for conservation out there in the marketplace. That opportunity must be thought through carefully as we try to get to grips with the global challenge. Will the Government support and actively promote the creation of conservation credits in Nairobi? I look to the ministerial response on that in the winding-up speech.
	Turning to the domestic agenda, it is clearly desirable that a cross-party consensus is achieved that includes the world of business, on which we will rely for many of the solutions to the challenge. People have in their in-trays documents on long-term investment decisions that will shape our ability to meet the 2050 target to reduce the carbon intensity of our economy, and they want some vision of what will happen after 2012. They want some vision of the political will to grasp the issue and take action, because that will shape their investment decisions.
	My understanding is that there is cross-party consensus on the target, although the language is shifting to suggest that it is a minimum rather than a maximum. Conservative Members at least believe that the 2050 target needs to be broken down. I put it to the Government that the evidence I have heard from business is that the 2050 target is simply not biting on today's decision makers, whether they sit in Whitehall, the civic centre or the boardroom. I have not heard a plausible or robust argument against breaking down that target into more pressing milestones. I look forward to the ministerial response on that.
	The issue between us seems to be about tax, which I regret for two reasons. First, I detect that there is increasingly common ground, at least among Conservative Members, about the need to re-examine the tax system. The shadow Chancellor spoke about green taxes in Tokyo, and there is clearly a mood to shift taxation from goods towards bads.

Christopher Huhne: Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the shadow Chancellor's formulation on green taxes allows for the possibility of a decline in green tax pressure? He talks about green taxes rising as a share of taxes. If taxes overall were falling, that would be perfectly consistent with green taxes falling. That is why we have been careful to express this as turning around green taxes as a share of national income.

Nick Hurd: That is a point to take up with the shadow Chancellor. The point that I want to make about tax is that there seems to be increasingly common ground among Conservative Members about the need to re-examine the system.
	Although taxes are important levers, they are not the only one. I want to pick up on a point that was made from our Front Bench. It seems to me that there ought to be common ground where there is silence in terms of the cross-party debate—that is, the attitude to constructive regulation and standards that we will expect from the key products that drive our energy consumption, such as the car, the home, the office and the light bulb.
	We can take people with us on a journey to revolutionise the standards of the products that are causing the problem, so I urge the people engaged in that cross-party consensus perhaps to focus on that in the short term as an opportunity to send a signal that will be heard by the manufacturers of those products and those who consume them.
	My next point to reinforce the opportunity for cross-party consensus relates to procurement in the public sector. About £500 billion is being spent, and that is an enormous lever with things attached to it. The evidence given to the Environmental Audit Committee over many years suggests that, although the Government are making progress and making the right noises, they are very inconsistent.
	In my intervention, I gave the example of the DHL contract—the largest Government contract in recent times. My understanding—the Minister might deny this—is that it does nothing to reduce the Government's carbon footprint. That opportunity has been missed, but I hope that the opportunity that the massive investment in the school building programme represents will not be missed. That carries with it a great opportunity to demonstrate the technologies that will make a difference and to connect young people in this country with the issue. Those are levers that we can pull and they provide opportunities to build credibility and prove to people sitting in Ruislip or Shanghai that we can do something to manage the risk of climate instability, which has the power to inflict huge financial and human costs on our society.

Paddy Tipping: I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd) because he makes two points—one on Britain's leadership in the world and the other on carbon pricing—that I want to reinforce and reiterate.
	The Government have achieved a great deal, but there will be big challenges in the future, not just for Government but for all of us. Let me list some of the achievements: the introduction of fiscal measures; the renewables obligation; the climate change levy; and the stepping up of duty on motor vehicle taxation. Those are important, and as other Members on both sides of the House have said, we need more. We have worked for many years to introduce a renewable transport fuel obligation, and it is almost within our grasp.

Christopher Huhne: If I understood the hon. Gentleman correctly, he mentioned that there had been a rise in fuel and car taxation. He may not be aware of this, but in fact the vehicle excise duty proposals announced in the Budget involve a fall, even in cash terms, of £10 million in overall revenue. Once again, fuel duty is declining in real terms. Therefore, he is not correct.

Paddy Tipping: I watched with interest the Liberal party conference and the proposals that came out of it. My simple point, however, is that it is important to step up the differential rates between cars of different capacity. As the hon. Gentleman draws me into that area, I wish that the Chancellor had done more, and I hope that we will continue to go in that direction. The hon. Gentleman also minimised the Warm Front scheme. I do not belittle the achievement of better insulation for 1.1 million people. Nor do I belittle the £800 million available between 2005 and 2008 for increasing and taking forward the Warm Front scheme. Those are important initiatives. If people want to build consensus, it is important to recognise what the Government have done.
	We need to recognise the challenges before us. A 20 per cent. reduction in carbon emissions by 2010 is a big step, which we will have to work hard to achieve. The Government's aspiration for 20 per cent. renewables by 2020 is regarded by many in the industry as impossible. Achieving our medium-term target of a 60 per cent. reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 would be an amazingly hard step, not just for Government and domestically, but internationally, too.
	The Government have been extremely strong in raising climate change on the domestic agenda. Looking back to Kyoto, the role of the European Union was important, but so was that of our Deputy Prime Minister. Who would have thought that climate change would be one of the top two agenda issues at Gleneagles? That would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Keeping the discussion going to St. Petersburg in Russia was also an important step forward, as was the Gleneagles dialogue, a sophisticated diplomatic approach outside the United Nations framework, which, because of its size, will prove difficult. I was excited by what was achieved in Mexico last week, and I was disappointed at what remains to be done. I guess that all of us look forward to Nairobi next month. Again, it will be hard for us to make progress through the United Nations process. But it is important that the British Government continue to show leadership.
	The big challenge is post-Kyoto in 2012, which is only six years away. We need to use international discussions now to make our arguments for what comes next. I am not entirely clear about what should come next, but I do know that there is a false dichotomy between those who argue for targets and those who argue for technology. The real gain will be made by introducing targets that encourage new technologies, so that we have a target-led approach that produces market-led solutions through technology.
	The big challenge is carbon pricing, as the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd) rightly said. If we are serious about making change, we have to secure a high, stable price for carbon that can be maintained for a long period. The buzz phrase in the industry—I hear it from British electricity generators—is carbon pricing that is long, loud and legal. As a catchphrase, that has much substance. The way to achieve that new, higher price for carbon is to build on what we have.
	I accept that phase 1 of the European emissions trading scheme is in its infancy, but there have already been difficulties. I suspect that phase 2, which we are working towards, will be much more robust. It is important that it is transparent, open and honest, and does not lead to anti-competitive behaviour across Europe. We must move towards a fair auctioning system, rather than the calculations that have been part of phase 1, in which vested interests and a "business as usual" approach have been prevalent.
	The real prize will be phase 3 of the European emissions trading scheme. The discussions of that phase have to be linked to the post-Kyoto discussions. We have to extend the European emissions trading scheme to aviation and other transport and industries that hon. Members have mentioned, and we must also extend it from Europe internationally. That is an amazing challenge.
	Unless we can achieve a firm, stable and high price for carbon, the new investment—in new plant and equipment—that we need alongside the change in behaviour, will not happen. Let us rally the consensus around carbon pricing. It will have real effects on the aviation industry. Members on both sides of the House have talked strongly about the threat of aviation, but a true trading system could help us to make progress on that.
	I am keen to achieve consensus, but let me strike a discordant note. It is easy to have a consensus about not very much. The Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives have a consensus on climate change, but it is on the headline and the principle. When it comes to the mechanics of the necessary policies, it is hard to build consensus. For example, where does the Conservative party stand on wind farms? Are they giant bird blenders? Does the Conservative party want a moratorium? It should make its position clear.
	The Conservatives should also make their position clear on the renewables obligation. We have had some discussion of that this afternoon and it has been a useful mechanism for encouraging new technologies. We do need a more sophisticated system, and the energy review acknowledges that. The consultation on the issue has just started. I think that there is a place for nuclear, and a strong argument to support replacing nuclear with nuclear. However, if we argue that nuclear is the last resort, it is clear that that replacement will never happen.
	It is never easy to build consensus, but the climate change Bill that many hon. Members have mentioned in the debate would serve as a vehicle for a discussion and give us an opportunity to talk about consensus. There are merits in introducing year-on-year reductions, and the discussion about the Bill has, at the very least, raised the profile of the argument. Even so, difficulties remain, as any such Bill would involve domestic rather than international targets. It would introduce year-on-year changes, rather than the lengthy planning period— 15 years at least, or perhaps even longer—needed for the introduction of a trading scheme. To that extent, it would deal in aspirations rather than mechanisms.
	I listened very carefully to what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said about carbon budgeting. I hope that the Government will introduce relevant measures in the forthcoming Queen's Speech. Even if a Bill on carbon budgeting is not announced then, I hope that the possibility of introducing an overarching scheme to that end will be discussed further.
	When the Labour party renews itself—hopefully next spring—I hope that a policy initiative will be produced that will make a break with the Labour party of the past, and drive us on to becoming a new Labour party that is environmentally sensitive and in touch with people's aspirations for the future.
	My final point is more parochial. I come from a coal mining area, and coal has been facing a difficult time. Many people have said that we met our Kyoto targets because of the dash for gas, although I think that our success in that regard is due to the coal industry's decline. However, I was pleased that the energy review spoke strongly about coal having a place in the future.
	Real problems exist at the moment. As my hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Rothwell (Colin Challen) noted, UK Coal, our biggest producer, is arguing about price with generators such as EDF. We can sort out difficulties like that, but the challenge for coal has to do with the environment rather than economics.
	The question of how we burn coal—whether we use supercritical boilers or go down the gasification route—is immaterial, as the market will decide that. More important just now is the fact that people like Richard Budge and his company called Powerfuel, together with Powergen and RWE, are looking to bring new, cleaner coal plants on stream. The problem that they face is that the carbon allowance offered to new entrants to the market is only 40 per cent. of the benchmark level for a new gas plant. Therefore, people who want to bring in cleaner coal technology are left at a competitive disadvantage. It cannot be sensible policy to prohibit or restrict new entrants to the market who will be cleaner producers of energy from coal when the comparators for them are plants that are more polluting. The Government must look at that problem, as a matter of urgency.
	In addition, we must move away from the notion of carbon capture and sequestration, even though the concept is a good one and I am pleased that experiments are taking place, such as at the new Powergen plant on the north Norfolk coast and at the proposed RWE plant on the Thames. Carbon capture has plenty of potential, and it could be used to enhance our oilfields, but it is not a silver bullet. The technology is at a rudimentary stage. One of the things that I want from the Stern review, which will be published shortly, is an acknowledgement that carbon capture and storage will be good for the UK and that investing money now will save money in the long run.
	We want new coal plant in the UK, but that is as nothing compared with the demand for coal in India and China. In this country and in Europe, we must demonstrate that we can burn coal more cleanly and deal with the consequences of carbon emissions. Saving a tonne of carbon in India or China has equal consequences for us in the west; we live in a global world.
	My message to our Government is that although they have achieved a lot, they must continue to hit their targets. Unless they do so, we will lose the moral high ground—the leadership that could take us to a greener, cleaner environment in the future.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Many Members still want to make a contribution to this important debate. Time is limited so I ask them to put some limitation on their contributions.

James Duddridge: I shall try to keep my comments as brief as possible, Madam Deputy Speaker.
	I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate. I should like a more substantial debate in the future, based on a Bill similar to the one proposed by Friends of the Earth.
	I am proud to be a member of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which has been conducting a timely inquiry into various elements of climate change. Last month, we reported on renewable energy and biofuels. We are currently taking evidence about what individual citizens can do, and we will shortly be looking at the longer-term policy agenda.
	We recently visited China, which was incredibly insightful. We went to a car factory, where we were told of the rather worrying aspiration to give every Chinese family a car. Several politicians spoke to us frankly about climate change; they shared their distrust of capitalism and what the west is saying. One of them summarised their views well when he said, "Look, you've had your industrial revolution, you've had your chance to develop. Now it's our turn." But if they develop as we have done, it will kill off the planet.
	It is essential that the international community works together, but the impact of China and India does not mean that we should not act as individual citizens. That Chinese politician said, "We want to see you suffer as well", and asked why we did not all have photovoltaic cells and solar power. If we expect the Chinese to change, we need to change even more.
	We must take climate change even more seriously than we do already. At Cabinet level there is already a precedent for cross-cutting Ministers. There should be a Minister solely responsible for climate change, not with a full Department but with a team that cuts across Departments. It is not enough just to have a climate change office, although it is a step in the right direction.
	Flooding and housing are significant issues in my constituency and, more generally, in the adaptation and mitigation debates. In my constituency, the Environment Agency is consulting about flood defences in the Great Wakering area, where there is an enormous risk of flooding, as there is throughout south Essex. This morning, I met Charles Beardall, the very good manager of the Environment Agency's eastern region. He told me an astonishing fact—I had to make him repeat it three times because I thought he had got it wrong: a house built this year with only a one in 1,000 chance of flooding every year will have a one in eight chance by 2080. I have a newborn son, and those houses could flood within his lifetime. Building in the Thames Gateway—let alone in a number of other areas—makes no sense to me when we are subject to those risks. In fact, we are considering building more than 120,000 houses in the Thames Gateway by 2016. That makes no sense to me whatsoever.
	We must do more about the standard of the houses that are built. It is quite criminal that we let houses be built to such a low standard. I am not one of those people who say that we should compel companies to include solar panels, photovoltaic cells, water butts or insulation. We need to set overall standards, and companies can innovate as a result of them. For example, we could say that half the water consumed by the house must be collected locally, or that the house must produce half the energy that it consumes, and it does not matter whether a wind farm or photovoltaic heating is used to do so. If we are prescriptive, we will stifle innovation, and it is important that we do not do that.
	Action on new housing will also pump-prime the marketplace. The Chinese were very entrepreneurial in many ways. They were saying, "We want you to have photovoltaic cells. In fact, we can produce them very cheaply if you buy in volume." Joking apart, such things will be beneficial, and high-profile environmental activities help to educate people. Certainly, when the Select Committee went to Leicester to see eco-houses and wind farms in schools, we could see that that was helping to educate children.
	We have done an awful lot to date, but there is so much more to do. We need a climate change Bill. I hope that the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs misread his speech earlier on, because I was diametrically opposed to what he seemed to say. I think that he said that he believed that we would be judged not by results, but by how we get there. I think that he probably got that the wrong way around—we will be judged by results—and the Friends of the Earth Bill would put down a base point that all future Governments could aim for and achieve. That would overcome some of the electoral resistance to some of the very difficult and tough decisions that we must take.

Emily Thornberry: I speak as a sponsor of the Climate Change Bill, and I urge the Government to consider incorporating such a Bill into the Queen's Speech. I have listened with great interest to what the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has said about carbon budgets, and I hope that there will be some creative discussion in the short time between now and the Queen's Speech. It may well be that, in the end, some of the aspirations of those who support the Climate Change Bill can be covered by a proposed carbon budget.
	I came into politics, as I am sure everyone else did, to change the world, not necessarily to save it, but we must begin by saving it. We have a responsibility, to our children and to our children's children, to ensure that we properly look after the world, which we are only given on trust, so that we can pass it on to our children in a fit state. We are failing to do that at the moment, and we must take that seriously. Of course the biggest challenge is climate change, and the question is what on earth do we do.
	What on earth do we do, particularly when we as a country are responsible only for 2 per cent. of emissions? Although people are persuaded that we need to do something, they are not persuaded about what they can do to make a real difference. The context in the UK is that about a third of end-user carbon emissions comes from industry, about a third comes from households and about a third from transport. So what individual people do in Britain is important, and it is really important that we change people's behaviour, but the question is how.
	Everyone has been talking about the importance of consensus. Of course, I am entirely in favour of that in principle, but what I really think is that we can only tackle something like climate change if we stick to fundamental Labour values. We have to stick to the values of internationalism, radicalism and collectivism. I hear what the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) says about the beauty of regulation and I agree with him, but I am not entirely sure that some of the people sitting behind him—the colour drained from their faces as he spoke—necessarily do so. Nevertheless, if we talk in terms of those fundamental values, we can get somewhere.
	Obviously, we have to begin with a real commitment to internationalism and an understanding that Britain can play a leading role. It has done so in the development of Kyoto and the European emissions trading scheme. That is fantastic, but we can continue to play a leading role only if we have the moral authority of being able to show that we, as a country—as the first industrialised country—can tackle this issue head on and continue to grow our industries and be all right, and be carbon neutral. We have to be able to show a lead on that. In turn, we can get all sorts of benefits. However, unfortunately, we are not leading in any of the 10 main green industries. Why not? As a country, we are potentially the Saudi Arabia of wind energy. Why do we not have a flourishing wind industry? Of course, I could make all sorts of cheap points about the Liberal Democrats and their planning controls and stranglehold on wind energy in Scotland, but I will not do that because we are talking about consensus.

Jo Swinson: Does the hon. Lady not accept that, in fact, the Liberal Democrats in Scotland who hold the positions of the Minister for Environment and Rural Development and the Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning, my colleagues Ross Finnie and Nicol Stephen, have put Scotland at the leading edge of renewable energy—certainly far ahead of England and Wales, where Labour is governing on its own?

Emily Thornberry: As a Government, the most important thing that we have to take on board is that people know that they must do something, but they do not know what. Enlightened self-interest is not sufficient. Putting a wind turbine up on a roof is not by itself sufficient. Nor is it by itself sufficient for people to change their cars. We have to do that as part of a structure. I would deign to suggest that, as a Government, it is our responsibility to show that there is a structure. We have to say, "Internationally, we are doing a certain thing. Nationally, the Government are doing a certain thing. We are expecting industry and business to do certain things, and, if they do not, we will force them to do so through fiscal measures, regulation and other means. Individually, your responsibility is to do a certain thing." We have to have a clear structure, so that people know that, when they play a role, they are doing so within a wider structure. We have to be centralist and regulatory.
	We should not be afraid to govern, to lead and to be radical, because, in the end, the people who will suffer most from climate change are the poor. Two thirds of Bangladesh will disappear. What will happen to the families of many of my constituents? Sub-Saharan Africa will not be sub-Saharan any more. The Sahara will simply expand. Will we look into the eyes of Africans and tell them that they cannot come here, even though the rest of their family may have died and they may not have an agriculture any more? How can we do that? We will not be able to. Poor constituents will not be able to afford the ramped up costs of fuel. We have been able to tackle fuel poverty effectively in many ways so far, but what will happen in the future, when fuel prices go up?
	There are times when the Labour Government do such good things and we do not even realise what we have done and how what we have done comes out of Labour values. For example, there was talk earlier about households and the importance of changing things within them, such as insulation. Certain sneery comments were made about the Warm Front scheme. We should remember the decent homes standard. Half my constituents live in social housing and they are all having their houses done up at the moment. As far as the constituents—the punters—are concerned, they are getting new kitchens and bathrooms. That is great and that is what they celebrate—thanks to a Labour Government. However, they are also getting new boilers and insulation. When fuel prices go up, as they will, half my constituents will be literally insulated from those prices, because we have put our traditional values into a modern setting and are not only looking after our constituents, but tackling climate change with radical action. We should do more of that. That is what the Labour party is about and what our Labour Government should be about.

Jeremy Hunt: Is the hon. Lady worried that those same Labour values that are leading to hospitals being closed will mean that people will have to drive further to go to hospital? Would she support that reflection of her Government's achievements?

Emily Thornberry: The fact that the majority of people have their health conditions dealt with in the community is important. Keeping people in hospitals for less time is an important part of tackling climate change, as is making sure that Labour values are put into action. There are many ways in which we have to move ahead for policy reasons, but, as a Labour MP, I would say that we always have to keep an eye on traditional Labour values and the importance of tackling the radical problem of climate change. We should take heart, because although we might be coming to this at the eleventh hour, we have a Labour Government. I am confident that we will tackle the problem properly with the new leadership at the Department. We must not be afraid and we have to be radical.

Jo Swinson: I am sure that most hon. Members have, like me, received dozens of letters, e-mails, surgery visits and phone calls on the subject of climate change and, most recently, on the importance of having a climate change Bill in the Queen's speech in November. I welcome the opportunity to add my voice and the voices of the residents of East Dunbartonshire to the calls for such a Bill. I hope that Ministers will take the interest in this debate and the fact that 380 Members have signed the early-day motion calling for such a Bill as a clear sign that it must be a priority. I hope that such a Bill will be taken forward in November because we must have annual targets on reducing carbon dioxide emissions so that we can see in the House what progress is being made every single year and so that hon. Members can hold the Government to account. A long-term target on its own will not help us to tackle the problem.
	In among lots of constituency work during the parliamentary recess—it is not a long holiday, as some in the media would have us believe—I took time out to go to the cinema to watch "An Inconvenient Truth". I am sure that many hon. Members will have seen the film and I wholeheartedly recommend it to those who have not. Perhaps the film should be essential viewing because it puts in the starkest possible terms the scale of the problem that we face. However, the film is not depressing because it does not say that there is nothing that we can do about the problem. On the contrary, it encourages every single citizen who sees it to play their part, take their responsibilities serious and lobby their representatives. I especially liked the bit at the end of the film when a list of actions that people can take is shown as the credits roll. Obviously, there is a slight American bias, because people are encouraged to contact their member of Congress and senator. The film suggests that if the representatives do not take the viewers seriously, they should run for Congress themselves. I thought that that was good advice, and we should all be aware that we will have constituents who will expect us to take the problem incredibly seriously.
	Many hon. Members who have spoken have rightly highlighted the international and European dimensions of how we will tackle the problem. However, it is also hugely important to focus on what individuals can do. We know about the little energy-saving measures that could lead to massive cuts in the release of carbon dioxide if lots of people carried them out. Such measures include changing to energy-saving light bulbs and using public transport rather than a car, especially for shorter journeys, or perhaps leaving the car at home and walking. They also include increasing recycling, turning the thermostat down a few degrees and turning appliances off, instead of on to stand-by. One would think that all those little things would not make a huge difference, but they can be important.
	Obviously, we all consume energy and are thus responsible for a certain amount of carbon emissions. I encourage people to make themselves aware of the ways in which they can offset their carbon emissions. Organisations such as Climate Care and carbonneutral.com give lots of information about how that can be done. By planting trees or investing in renewable energies, it is possible to offset the carbon tonnes that one emits. I recently logged on to do the calculations so that I could pay for my carbon offset and I encourage other hon. Members to do the same, especially because our job requires a huge amount of travelling, so we are perhaps responsible for higher than average carbon emissions.
	I have an issue that I would like to raise with the Leader of the House, so perhaps the Ministers present can communicate it to him. Something that will need to change is our beloved institution, the House of Commons, as it starts to address climate change issues. Heating has been mentioned, and we have recently seen better recycling facilities introduced, although others may agree that it is a bit strange that we had to wait until 2005 for that. I hope that the House authorities will take on board the fact that we need to lead by example.
	There are so many aspects of climate change that it is impossible to cover them all, so I should like to focus on waste and recycling, which are very important. Carbon dioxide is the greenhouse gas that we are most concerned about, but the second most important is methane. Landfill waste produces most of the UK's methane at the moment. Some 648 kilotonnes of methane were released from landfill in 2005. I welcome moves to reduce the amount of our waste being sent to landfill annually; indeed, many councils are currently grappling with how to deal with the impact of the landfill tax, which increases year on year, and the fines that will be imposed if we do not get to grips with how much we send to landfill and how much we recycle.
	East Dunbartonshire council has recently moved to fortnightly refuse collections for residual waste but at the same time is investing hugely in recycling facilities, with doorstep recycling happening weekly. Garden waste, glass, plastics, cans, paper and cardboard are collected, and the council hopes to increase the amount of materials collected. That was not an easy step to take, and it is fair to say that the local reaction has not been unanimously in support of the change. I am sure that in other areas where that has happened there has been a similar reaction. However, this bold environmental step is necessary. It is regrettable that in my area Labour and the Conservatives opposed the move, and I suspect that in other parts of the country they themselves have had to implement similar schemes. It is an example of the changes that individuals will increasingly have to make to their behaviour that are difficult at first but in the long term will help us to tackle the problem.
	It is important that the Government and business play a role. Looking at the UK plastics industry, we see that our recovery figures—the energy that we get back from plastics—are awful compared with those of our European counterparts. Less than a quarter of our plastic is recovered in some way for energy, and a tiny proportion is recycled. Our European neighbours are far better at that than us. Denmark, the Netherlands and Switzerland manage to recover or recycle over 75 per cent.
	Obviously, some plastics are easier to recycle than others, and we can only take things to be recycled if there is a market for the recycled plastic. It is important that the Government encourage business through best practice not only to create things out of materials that can be recycled, but to use recycled materials to help to create that market. If encouragement and the sharing of best practice cannot succeed in changing behaviour, regulation will be required.
	A related issue on which we need to take urgent action is the excess packaging that we see every day when we go to the supermarket. One goes to buy a few apples, which one would previously have put in a bag and taken to the checkout, but now they come in a foam tray, they have a bit of card around them and the whole thing is shrink-wrapped in plastic. Crucially, a lot of that material cannot be recycled, and it is consumers, our constituents, who have to pay for it—not once but three times. They pay for the excess packaging at the checkout; they pay the landfill tax through their council tax bills for getting rid of rubbish; and there is the environmental cost. Business must take this more seriously, and if it does not, the Government must make it do so.
	That is just one of the many issues raised in the debate that are important to solving the problem of climate change. I hope that Ministers will address those concerns and take them seriously. Climate change is happening, and it is happening quickly. Action is needed now, and if we are not successful the worst of the consequences will not be faced by today's Ministers or even most of the MPs in this House. It is my generation, and our children and children's children, who will face the brunt of climate change and inherit this dreadful legacy. Everyone in the UK has a responsibility to tackle this problem, and we as legislators must take a lead. A climate change Bill in the Queen's Speech is a vital first step, but only the first step on a long and challenging journey.

Rob Marris: I declare an interest: I think that I am a member of Friends of the Earth, and I joined Greenpeace in 1975, before some hon. Members were born, and I am still a member. Hon. Members who were in the Chamber when I spoke on Second Reading of the Finance Bill will have some idea of which issues I shall address.
	It is absolutely shocking that, as we would find if we went through  Hansard and added it up, in some three and a half hours of debate, about three minutes have been spent on the effects of climate change. There is lovey-dovey consensus on the need to cut emissions and so on, which is terribly important. The Government have a good record on the issue, but I will not go into it, as everyone in the Chamber knows about it. We have been discussing the need to cut emissions, the need to achieve the 60 per cent. target by 2050, many other good measures, and the Government's—and, to some extent, the Conservative Government's—good track record in cutting emissions. On the causes of climate change, the country and the Government have a great record, nationally and internationally. However, we never talk about coping with the effects of climate change in the Chamber—at least, not that I have heard, and I am here a great deal, as hon. Members will know. For our constituents, there is a crucial difference between the cause and the effect of climate change.
	The United Kingdom is responsible for 2 per cent. of emissions. If we cut that to nil tomorrow, there would still be international climate change, and we would still experience its effects in the United Kingdom. That is not a counsel of despair, and it is not to say that we should give up on all those measures. The president of the Royal Society, Frances Cairncross, made a good speech on the subject on 4 September, in which she said:
	"Adaptation policies have big advantages. They can be pursued at a national—indeed, at a local level—and so will involve far less complex international negotiation."
	We can actually do something, in the United Kingdom, about the effects of climate change. I listened carefully to the thoughtful and consensual speech of the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth). He can correct me if I am wrong, but he did not say a word, in any real sense, about the effects of climate change.

Peter Ainsworth: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, as I know that time is short. If he looks back over several years, he will find that the effects of climate change have been well demonstrated and discussed in the Chamber. I merely "parked" the issue for this debate to advance a discussion of what we all need to do to counter those effects.

Rob Marris: With the greatest respect, what we all need to do is deal with the effects of climate change, as well as the causes. The hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne), who opened for the Liberal Democrats, devoted one or two sentences to flood damage, which, for a Hampshire MP, is understandable. He mentioned the research undertaken by the Natural Environment Research Council into animal habitats and extinction—that was another sentence, I think. He mentioned the Department for International Development and the effects of climate change in the sub-Saharan region, which include mass population movements, conflict and so on. However, those subjects took up about a minute and a half in a speech of some 25 minutes.

Christopher Huhne: I merely point out that I also talked about the west coast main line, the Thames barrier and what we need to do to improve flood defences. I think that he will find that there was quite a lot in my speech about dealing with adaptations. The hon. Gentleman's point is well taken, and certainly we Liberal Democrat Members intend to tackle those problems.

Rob Marris: I thought that I had adverted to the fact that the hon. Gentleman mentioned flood defences. He is right about the Thames barrier, the construction of which was very far-sighted. However, it has been in existence for 20 years or more.
	It is even more shocking and depressing that the Government—I shall come on to their overall record later—have a good record on adaptation internationally. Adaptation is the technical word for work to deal with the effects of climate change. Earlier this year, an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report cited the United Kingdom as one of the top five OECD members—there are 30, and they are of course the advanced industrial countries—moving towards the implementation adaptation. The other four were the United States of America, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands. The situation in this country is, however, unacceptable, as the Government have not adequately addressed the effects of climate change. The Opposition, too, have barely talked about the effects, yet we are one of the top five countries in terms of adaptation. I find that particularly depressing.
	On what the Government—my Labour Government—are doing—

Gregory Barker: I do not want to delay the hon. Gentleman, but he knows that the greatest champion of adaptation and engineering and technological solutions to the challenge of global warming is the Bush Administration in Washington. At this crucial stage, should we not focus all our national efforts in the next 10 years on averting climate change, rather than encouraging people to think there are ways in which we can avoid it through engineering and technological solutions alone?

Rob Marris: I profoundly disagree with the hon. Gentleman. We must do both. Climate change has already started. We have heard some of the statistics today and I could reel off a load more, but time is short. Climate change has already started, whether, from the point of view of the flat-earthers, human activity is a contributing factor or not. I and probably all hon. Members present think it is, but let us leave that on one side.
	The statistics for the past 200 years show that climate change has already happened and is already having adverse effects around the world, including here in the United Kingdom. Yes, we need the technology in order to adapt to climate change. The Thames flood barrier has been mentioned—a magnificent piece of technology which has been used more frequently in recent years, as the hon. Member for Eastleigh indeed said. That is a technological solution to dealing with the effects of rising sea waters—dealing with the effects of climate change. It does not mean that we say, "We'll just build lots of those around the country" and do nothing about the causes of climate change. As a society we need to get a grip and address the effects of climate change, which has already started.
	On what the Government have already done, we have the UK climate impacts programme, about which some hon. Members know. It is a team of 15 people in Oxford who act as a link between policy makers and the public, producing research and so on. We have the Government's adaptation policy framework. In November 2005 they published the consultation on phase 1. The publication of the consultation on phase 2 is due some time this autumn.
	That is a consultation on an adaptation policy framework to deal with an issue that I personally know has been around for over 30 years, because I was taught about the greenhouse effect in university over 30 years ago. That is one of the reasons why even before all the furore about CFCs and so on, I never bought aerosol cans. I am probably one of the few people in their 50s in the UK who has bought fewer than a dozen aerosol cans in their whole life, because of climate change. Although I laud the Government on setting up the adaptation policy framework and holding consultations on it, that should have started—it was mentioned before—under Margaret Thatcher, if not before. The problem and the effects on the planet have been known about for at least 30 years.
	A third step that the Government are taking is the UK environment facility to assist developing countries in adapting to climate change. As has been said in the Chamber, those who will be hit hardest are the poorest in the poorest countries, including sub-Saharan Africa, where 182 million people will be affected. There will be wars over water resources, which will drive conflict in the middle east for the next 50 years. Wars over water resources and the problems associated with water resources will get more acute as global warming heats up many parts of the planet and therefore evaporation continues and so on. Those are the effects of climate change with which we need to grapple. One of the effects will be war or the huge potential for war. We have an international role and the Government, with their immense leadership on the issue around the world, ought to be taking a leading role, and I hope they are.
	On the Government's position, I shall read out an answer to a written parliamentary question. The answer was from the Minister for Climate Change and the Environment, who is in his place, on 12 May this year. The written question that I asked was:
	"To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what steps he has taken to address the effects on the UK of global warming; and what further steps he plans to take in the next five years."
	I received a written reply of about eight lines from the Minister. The first six lines referred to causes of climate change. That is very important, but nothing to do with the question that I asked, which was to do with the effects.
	The written answer stated:
	"The recently published climate change programme"—
	it was published in March 2006—
	"contains commitments to adapt to that climate change which is already unavoidable."—[ Official Report, 12 May 2006; Vol. 446, c. 581W.]
	That was it.
	The written answer referred to a document, which concerns adaptation, changes and dealing with effects. The Minister is a friend of mine—I have known him for more than 20 years, before either of us were Members of this esteemed place—but on a rough calculation, 6 per cent. of the document, which is entitled "Climate Change: The UK Programme 2006", addresses adaptation, which involves a 12-page section in a 193-page document plus one or two passing references. About half of those 12 pages refers to research into adaptation, which is very important but should not be all that we are doing. We are far too late, and we need to step up our response.
	Half of a document such as "Climate Change: The UK Programme 2006" should be devoted to dealing with the effects of climate change, because we know that the effects are coming, regardless of how successful we are in international negotiations. The effects have already started, and there is an accelerative effect in the early years in terms of changes produced in the environment by the stuff that is already in there and the stuff that, realistically, we know is going to be put in there in the next 20 years, even if everybody around the world halves their output. The effects are only going to get worse, and a lot more of the document should have been devoted to addressing them.
	I am sorry to take up so much time, but the issue of UK climate change has hardly been addressed this afternoon, so I will be somewhat indulgent. Paragraph 5 on page 130 of the document states:
	"Chapter 1 set out the way in which the UK's climate has changed in the past, and is predicted to change further in the future."
	If one examines chapter 1, however, that is not strictly true. Page 13 of the document discusses a point that our constituents, who have a Malaga-to-Margate view of climate change—the subconscious attitude is "We can all eat olives in the west midlands, and won't that be wonderful?"—do not often discuss:
	"reduction in the strength of the North Atlantic ocean currents...could cause significant cooling in the North Atlantic and Europe region".
	Conversely, page 11 states:
	"by the middle of this century such a summer"—
	the reference is to the summer of 2003, when there were record high temperatures, such as the 38.5° C recorded at Faversham, Kent on 10 August 2003—
	"may occur every two or three years."
	Perhaps understandably, the document does not even set out what it states that it sets out, which is where the United Kingdom climate is going in the next century, because we do not know the answer. When people talk about dealing with the effects of climate change, the discussion is often predicated—this is true of some of the adaptation plans in the document—on longer, drier summers and warmer, wetter winters in most of the United Kingdom. That might not happen, however, because we could end up with a Newfoundland climate. Those of us who have spent time in Canada—I have never been to Newfoundland, but I lived in Canada for many years—know that the climate is not nice, and the latitude is similar to that of the UK.
	We should do a lot more on storm damage, subsidence, health advice and research on plants, including an each way bet—will we get olives in the west midlands, or will we get tundra plants, such as those grown in northern Canada, because we have got a Newfoundland climate? We should consider the built environment in terms of not only insulation, but bigger gutters and drain pipes, because the rain will become more torrential—it has already become more torrential in parts of the UK in recent years.
	Landslides because of heavy rain are also an issue. Imagine if an event such as that at Boscastle were to happen in, for example, London—disaster! What are we doing about disaster planning in looking to avoid landslides and so on by taking prophylactic action?
	On immigration control and ID cards, Opposition Members will not like it, but we have to be realistic. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) rightly referred to the poorest in the world being hit the hardest. They will understandably want to move to the UK. What are we going to do about water supply? What are we going to do about disease control when we have different diseases here? What are we going to do about coastal erosion? What are we going to do about polderising Norfolk to stop the flooding? What are we going to do about the likely increased incidence of forest fires up in Scotland with lightning strikes on dry timber, which I used to deal with for a living?
	Those effects of climate change are all happening in the UK. I urge the Government seriously to address those effects as well as the wonderful work that they have done on the causes—emissions. I urge hon. Members to wake up to the effects that we know are coming and not to continue to have the kind of debate that we have had today, which, though important, is almost one-sided.

Jeremy Hunt: I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris), because I want to echo what he says about the dangers of cosy consensus. We have had a lot of consensus in the Chamber this afternoon, but that is easy to achieve when we talk only about what the problem is and much harder if we take the difficult step of talking about what the solutions might be.
	I do not want to break the spirit of consensus, because it is important that parties work together on this issue. I pay tribute to the Government for moving it up the agenda, particularly at the Gleneagles summit last year, but they have given us precious little detail as to how we are going to meet the 60 per cent. reduction by 2050. That is a matter of great concern to me. I come from a constituency that includes the town of Godalming, which was the first town in the world to have a public supply of electricity back in 1881. Interestingly, at that time public transport used biomass as its fuel; now, 125 years later, we are coming round to seeing that that might not have been such a bad thing.
	We have consensus in two areas but not in a third. We have consensus about the scale of the climate change that is happening. The Secretary of State said that there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now than there has been for 750,000 years. I have heard scientists say that it is more like 40 million years. Whichever it is, there is a huge amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, on a scale as never before. NASA scientists say that the earth is warmer than it has been for 1,000 years and within 1° of being warmer than it has been for 1 million years. That results in several of the effects that the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West talked about, such as desertification in Africa, the melting of the ice caps and of permafrost, and global dimming.
	There is, too, a relative degree of scientific consensus about what will happen if we carry on as we are: the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will increase from 380 parts per million towards 1,000 parts per million as a result of the industrialisation of China, India and so on. There is a danger that 50 million to 100 million people could be displaced, mainly in the poor parts of the world, following the disappearance of islands and countries.
	The difficult question is what we should do about it. Today, Shell published a projection that it would cost £4 billion a year to deal with the effects of climate change in a way that would meet our 2050 target of reducing emissions by 20 per cent. That is a lot of money, but it is less than a third of 1 per cent. of our gross domestic product. That is a tiny price to pay for dealing with the sheer unpredictability of messing around with our natural environment on the current scale. We have to be brave and accept that there will be costs to pay.
	Another significant change in this debate concerns my party. Under the leadership of my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), the Conservative party has made climate change and the environment one of the issues that is right at the top of our agenda. I like to think of it not as Saul having a conversion on the road to Damascus but as a reaffirmation of our traditional beliefs in conservation of the environment, and in not only a green and pleasant land but a green and pleasant planet. That is important because the Conservative party has traditionally understood the importance of wealth creation as an engine of change in society and fought against over-regulation of business.
	If ever there was a "Nixon goes to China" moment in the environment debate, it is now. It means that there is now no excuse for the Government not to introduce a climate change Bill. We need to see details of how we will meet the 2050 target. The Government are good at long-term targets. We had the 2050 target for reduction in CO2 emissions, a 2025 target for equality of respect for disabled people and the 2015 millennium goals, to which we are all signed up. They are important, but they could be described as NIMTO—not in my term of office—goals. If we are to make progress, we need targets that apply to all our terms of office. There is no excuse for not introducing a climate change Bill and starting the national debate about what we are going to do. I urge the Government, for the sake of all our futures, to take that opportunity.

Nia Griffith: I congratulate the Secretary of State on giving us such an excellent exposé and clearly making the case for concerted action to combat climate change.
	We can argue for ever and a day about the role of climate change Bills and targets, but the important thing is to devise solutions and implement them. Some solutions will be short term, some will be medium term and others will be long term. Some will involve more Government intervention and others will mean more individual responsibility, and we need to get the balance right.
	I was lucky enough last week to have the opportunity to see a tidal turbine, courtesy of Marine Current Turbines. It is an exciting project. We watched the tide come in—it is totally predictable—and produce enough energy for 800 homes. A few of those could obviously fuel a town, and we all know how many towns are close to the coast. There are therefore many opportunities, and I believe that the company is hoping to sort something out in Northern Ireland after Christmas. It will be its first commercial project there.
	I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping) for raising the subject of clean coal technology, which it is crucial to examine. Thirty-five per cent. of our electricity is generated by coal in our existing power stations, and that rose to 50 per cent. in the cold spell last winter. Clearly, we will depend on that for a considerable time. We should do everything possible to create a level playing field for clean coal technology. We should also consider using more of our indigenous coal. The scales have tipped and we are paying more for imported coal because of world coal markets than we are giving our producers at home. That has serious implications not only for security of supply and balance of payments but for the local economy and transport. Why do we waste fuel transporting coal around the world when we have it here? We need clean coal technology and carbon capture technology. If we can get ahead of the game, we can not only use it here but export it to countries such as China and India, which will clearly use coal for a long time.
	I want to consider not only the big solutions—the expert solutions, such as developing renewables and clean coal technology—but what we can do in the immediate future. We must convey the message that we cannot wait 10, 15 or 20 years, and that we have to act now. I shall make some suggestions that may be unpopular, but I should like to open the debate on them, and I hope that hon. Members will genuinely consider what we can do.
	We should seriously consider speed limits. We all want our cars and the freedom to go to places and be flexible, and the individual opportunity that those of us who own cars enjoy. But why could we not simply decide to have a much reduced speed limit? There are advanced countries where 50 mph is the norm. There is a psychological effect: when someone who is driving at 50 mph sees that everybody else is travelling at 70 mph or 80 mph, they feel that they are going very slowly. A psychological change could easily lead to a change in behaviour. There would be cost consequences: people would immediately save money on fuel and in other ways. Few people realise how much of an economy they can make just by travelling more slowly, but they cannot do that at the moment, because unless everybody else does so, they will feel that they are slowing everybody down. So I suggest a national speed limit of 50 mph, which would have the obvious added effect of making our roads safer. Speed is frequently a factor in fatal and serious accidents.
	We could also look at our urban speed limits. Speed is an extremely important factor in serious urban road accidents, and many road safety campaigns are highlighting the need for 20 mph limits in certain urban areas. Many Members will have had constituents coming to them who are desperate to get drivers to slow down as they pass their front doors. But those who complain about that can the next moment be driving a modern car themselves, not realising that they are going at a considerable speed. We have the ability to drive at speed, but we cannot change our human reaction speed. It would be nice if we could achieve a sea change in mentality, so that slowing down could truly be considered.
	I now turn to the really controversial bit. In order to make this a cheap change, I suggest that we interpret all our current speed signs not as miles per hour, but as kilometres per hour. If we do that, we will not need to change any of the national speed limit signs—50 mph would be 80 kph—because we do not have 70 mph signs; instead, because we have a national speed limit, we have "end of speed limit" signs. So 30 mph signs in towns would actually mean 30 kph, which is approximately 20 mph, and 40 mph signs would mean 40 kph, which is about 25 mph. That would also deal with the many requests that we receive for improved traffic-calming measures and the introduction of speed cameras.
	That solution would cost very little, and it has the nice advantage that it could easily be copied by many other countries. As has been mentioned many times today, these issues affect not just our own country but our fellow European Union member states and the rest of the world. If we can do something, that would be a good example to others.
	Car sharing is an old idea that has been mentioned many times before, but we must promote it in partnership with our local government colleagues, because it is something that we really can do. I know that people are terrified of the idea of being tied to somebody else's routine for five days a week, so let us introduce the idea in a more user-friendly way. If we were to car-share three days a week, people would still have two days when they could pop off to the shops, or whatever. The benefits in terms of congestion in towns, for example, would be enormous. We see so many queues of cars waiting to go through traffic lights with one person in each car, but if there were three or four people per car, the traffic would move three or four times more quickly.
	There would also be benefits in terms of pressure on parking. In many town centres, people coming in to work clog up parking spaces, and as a result nobody can come in to shop or to visit the town. That has a detrimental effect on local traders and persuades people to use the big out-of-town shopping centres. There would also be an impact on air quality in towns, because fewer cars would lead to less pollution; and the impact on climate change goes without saying. There would also be economic savings for commuters. The implementation costs—education, advertising and promotion—would be extremely modest, and implementation could be achieved very quickly.
	So there is hope. As we have seen with the ozone layer, it is possible to reverse trends, and we should grasp that hope as we address climate change. We must make the necessary decisions, although I accept that they are very difficult to make because they extend much further than simply the issue of the ozone layer. It is easy to give up using spray cans—like my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris), I have long since given up using aerosols—but it is important that we grasp the nettle and act immediately to begin to halt, and then to reverse, the effects of climate change.

Andrew Stunell: I am delighted to be able to contribute to this debate, and it has been extremely interesting to listen to the speeches that have been made so far. I would guess that this is the first time—and it will probably be the last—that the hon. Members for Morley and Rothwell (Colin Challen) and for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd) have been in agreement on anything. The word "consensus" has been used a great deal, and it is important to recognise that there is a belief—not only here in the House but more widely—that the moment has come for serious action to be taken on climate change.
	I want to pay a compliment—perhaps unusually, coming from these Benches—to the Deputy Prime Minister. The House ought to recognise that it was he who represented Britain's position at the Kyoto summit and played an active part in securing an agreement. At that point, many of us thought that there was an opportunity for Britain to show continuing international leadership as well as national leadership. Perhaps it is part of the cycle of hope and disappointment that is inevitable in politics that that has not really been followed through.
	At that time, I took on the energy portfolio for the Liberal Democrats—a post that I held for a number of years. I was therefore one of our representatives on the Standing Committee on the Energy Bill in 2000. Great efforts were made by hon. Members on both sides of the House—although regrettably, not from either the Government or the Conservative Front Bench—to strengthen the Bill and to put into it some positive, hard-edged proposals that would have implemented the kind of policies that we need in this country if we are to change our behaviour and modify the way in which we use energy.
	This is not all about taxation policy, although that is important. Nor is it all about regulation, although that is important, too. A lot is about changing the culture involved in our acting out our lives. I should like to give a parallel illustration. Long before I arrived in the House, legislation was introduced to make it compulsory for motorists to wear seat belts. It was not terribly popular, and for a long time it was not particularly well observed. It is now very well observed, however, and people believe that wearing seat belts simply goes with being in the car.
	Another parallel example that I have cited many times before is that of smoking on the London underground. Smoking on the London underground was always illegal, but it stopped when the King's Cross fire took place. Not even the yobs smoke on the underground nowadays, because that has become part of our culture. We need to ensure that the changes that we introduce not only run with the grain of popular culture but encourage it to go in the right direction.
	I was disappointed when many of the measures proposed by hon. Members on both sides of the House for inclusion in the Energy Bill in 2000 were not adopted. I shall give a small practical example. At that stage, it would have been possible to introduce a regulatory requirement that when electricity meters were replaced, they should be replaced by intelligent two-way meters. An attempt was made to introduce that provision, but it was unsuccessful.
	In 2004 I was fortunate enough to come first in the ballot for private Members' Bills. I chose to introduce the Bill that became the Sustainable and Secure Buildings Act 2004, which amends the building regulations set out in the Building Act 1984 and gives the Government the opportunity to introduce building regulations relating to sustainability, not only for new buildings but for existing ones. In that way, we can begin to catch the 99 per cent. of buildings that have already been built, and bring them up to an acceptable standard.
	It was interesting to hear what the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) said about traffic—she is obviously absolutely right—but we need to recognise that our houses produce twice as much carbon each year as our cars. We ought therefore to expend our political energy on doing something about our building stock, and particularly about our homes.

John Gummer: Does the hon. Gentleman share my disappointment that in the plans for the Thames Gateway and elsewhere, the Government have not insisted on all housing being built to the "excellent" eco-standard—which is, after all, only the beginning? It is now possible for us to produce houses that use only 40 per cent. of the energy that housing uses today.

Andrew Stunell: The right hon. Gentleman has a distinguished record, which I am happy to acknowledge, and he is absolutely right. If I had time for a longer speech, I would quickly expand on that area.
	It is true that opportunities are being missed all the time. My Bill specifically included a provision that now allows the Government to make regulations on the introduction of intelligent metering. Between 2000 and 2004, my Bill received Royal Assent, I am delighted to say, but between those dates 2 million electricity meters were installed to the old standards. My Bill came into force in September 2004. Between then and now, another 2 million electricity meters have been installed to the old standards, because the provisions of my Bill have not been implemented by the Government.
	I simply say that, although I was delighted by what the Secretary of State had to say—he was very encouraging—it is a pity that he has only just discovered what the Deputy Prime Minister knew in 1998, which is that this is an urgent problem that needs immediate action. The Secretary of State said that he was proud of this, that and the other, and proud of something else. I am pleased about that as well, but—and this is the big "but"—carbon dioxide emissions are still going up.
	To take a very small example, it costs about £5 to install an intelligent meter, as opposed to the stupid meters we are installing at present. Installing 4 million—which have been put in since 2000, when the first legislative opportunity was missed—would have cost an extra £20 million, but that would have meant a significant fraction of UK households having the capacity to install renewable generation plant without even having to blink, and removed one of the important barriers to installation.
	What I want to hear from the Secretary of State, and from the Minister when he makes the winding-up speech, is exactly what they are planning to do. The importance of having a Bill in the Queen's Speech lies not in the Bill itself, or in precisely what that Bill says, but in giving a timetable for performance that can be checked year by year.
	I want to say something to the Minister, and I really would like to hear the answer. My Bill—now my Act—contains a requirement for the Government to report to the House every two years what progress they have made. It came into force in September 2004; it is now October 2006. The two years are up and the report has not been issued, and it looks as though when it does come, it will be pretty thin.
	Yes, let us have another Act, and let it be Government legislation. The Government supported my Bill, as did, I am delighted to report, the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth), who was one of my sponsors. It was also supported by the hon. Member for Morley and Rothwell and by Members all over the House. The support was apparently unanimous, yet the Bill has not been implemented. Having a Bill in the Queen's Speech is important, as is having the right things in it, but let us hear from the Minister exactly what he is going to do, and how he is going to tell us about it.
	I suggest that the first thing the Minister should do is talk to the Department for Communities and Local Government. It holds my Bill in trust—and it is not delivering. Talk to the Department of Trade and Industry, too, because it is responsible for generation and renewables, as well as the creation of new energy sources. Talk to the Department for Transport, because transport is an important sector, which has to be tackled. Talk to the Treasury, because taxation is also a significant element of this.
	The most important thing is for the Secretary of State to be clear in his own mind that while we can produce press releases, and perhaps burn up political capital on statements, declarations and conferences, as well as playing about over what we do with our cars, what will make a difference in this country is whether we tackle the built environment, in which 50 per cent. of the energy we use is wasted, even though we already have on the statute book the legislation that can deal with it.
	Will the Minister agree to take action where he does not need to do anything special? All he needs to do is sign a couple of orders, get a few things going and cut the energy waste of the built environment by 50 per cent. That, surely, is an offer he cannot refuse.

Philip Dunne: When I became an MP, I approached this issue in relation to a concern about peak oil, our reliance on fossil fuels and how we would provide the energy to make our lives comfortable. However, having met former Vice-President Al Gore at this summer's Hay-on-Wye literary festival, and having seen extracts of his slide show, the urgency of the global challenge was brought home to me in a way that it had not been previously. I am especially pleased that this debate is taking place in Government time.
	Much has been said about the effects of global warming, illustrated by statistics, but we have not touched on its impact on the acidification of the oceans. According to the Royal Society, 50 per cent. of carbon dioxide emissions have been absorbed by the world's oceans. The impact of that on fish stocks alone is hard to predict. Joan Kleypas, a scientist from the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research, has said that
	"unfortunately, this is not an environmental problem that we've had to deal with in the past, and so we really don't have a very good grasp of what this means for ocean biology."
	As we speak, however, fish stocks in the south Pacific are under threat. It is hard to predict the impact of that, over time, on our ability to feed ourselves, but it is likely to be adverse.
	I am pleased that my neighbour, the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris), is back in his place, as I want to mention two effects in the local area where we both live. Olive groves are not being planted in Shropshire, but vineyards have been planted in the past decade that are starting to bear fruit more rapidly than had been predicted—so there are some upsides. Activity to ameliorate the impact of flooding has also occurred. As has been intimated, Shrewsbury, which has suffered flooding in recent years, will have what I hope will prove to be an effective flood barrier defence system. There are ways of addressing some such problems locally. The problem of the constituency of the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) falling into the sea, which was mentioned earlier, is not one that I am particularly keen to see addressed, but I am sure that others are. It sounds like a rather more expensive challenge than keeping Shrewsbury dry, but no doubt there is a challenge.
	What will we do to answer those challenges? I do not have lots of natural solutions, but I want to pick up on two or three. Clearly, this is a global problem, and Members on both sides of the House must acknowledge the work of the Government in seeking to lead international debate on the issue, and I give credit to them, from the Prime Minister downwards. However, the Government's thinking needs to be more joined up. In a recent embarrassing example, only two Sundays ago, a Sunday newspaper reported that the Secretary of State was in favour of a scheme to privatise the rain forest. Within four days, he had issued a denial saying that he was not in favour of privatising the rain forest and that he had been misunderstood. It transpires that that was because he had not bothered to discuss the matter with the Brazilian Government, who took rather a dim view of the rain forest being privatised.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd) referred appropriately to the challenge of deforestation and its contribution to greenhouse gases. I hope that the Minister will pick up on his idea of conservation credits.

John Gummer: Does my hon. Friend agree that a blatant example of the Government's double standards in international affairs was that they joined the dirty countries in Europe to vote against Austria and Denmark's proposal that we should put a date on the banning of HFCs? At this moment, the Government are having four HFC chillers installed in their refurbished former Home Office building—chillers that use a gas that is 2,000 times as bad for global warming as CO2.

Philip Dunne: That is a remarkably insightful intervention. I intended to refer to a point that I came across yesterday when we were talking about food procurement in the Public Accounts Committee. Other hon. Members have mentioned the DHL contract, but out of the Department of Health, the Department for Education and Skills and the Ministry of Defence, only the last is seriously considering the sustainability of its food procurement and bothering to visit other countries to ensure that livestock is reared in accordance with UK welfare standards. The other Departments have made no progress on that issue, save some lip service paid to local procurement.
	There is a place for regulation. Other hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell), referred to a climate change Bill and I am proud to have signed up to the "big ask", mainly because it will impose on the Government an obligation to report back to this House, and to be seen to introduce measures that will start to help to meet the targets. I am instinctively not someone who seeks to impose undue regulation on business, but in this case the issue is so significant that it requires a stimulus—and this stimulus is right.
	There is also a place for taxation. There has been some discussion of party conferences recently, and I enjoyed a debate at our party conference with members of the Liberal Democrats, in which we discussed the question, "Who are the tax cutters now?" The issue of green taxation is therefore something that I have considered in some detail. The Liberal Democrats' proposals have some gaping holes, because the behavioural changes that the taxation is designed to introduce will reduce the revenues on which they hope to rely, should their policies ever come into force.

Christopher Huhne: I assure the hon. Gentleman that the behavioural changes, as far as we can estimate them from the MORI research commissioned by the Government on the effects of the vehicle excise duty changes, have been taken into account in the revenue projections.

Philip Dunne: Luckily, we will never have to see those policies put into practice.
	There is broad consensus on the polluter pays principle across the Chamber, but the difficulty is that energy costs are a higher proportion of the income of lower income households, whether in transport, heating or other usages. Therefore, most such taxes are highly regressive. That is why much thought needs to go into green taxation. It should not be dreamed up on the back of an envelope. I urge the Government to consider carefully, as our Front Bench team is doing, what green taxation we should consider, especially as it impinges on individual households, to ensure that it is introduced as sensitively as possible.

Christopher Huhne: The hon. Gentleman is making a direct criticism of our proposals, but we specifically did not propose any green taxes on households for the reasons that he gives. Our proposals were for two transport taxes—aviation and vehicle excise duty. If he reads the recent study done for the Nordic Council, he will see that those taxes are not regressive as they have been applied in the Nordic countries. Some 28 per cent. of British households have no access to a car, so they will not be affected by a tax on new cars, and the average income of a person flying out of UK airports is little short of £50,000, which is double the national average. The hon. Gentleman is misinformed on the progressive or regressive effects of green taxes.

Philip Dunne: I do not want to turn this into a slanging match between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats on their respective proposals for green taxation. I will just say that the impact on aviation use of the significant fuel price increases of the past five years has been negligible. How a tax on air tickets would have an impact has yet to be explained.
	Finally, I shall deal briefly with the role that the Government have to play in technical innovation, leadership and pump-priming for technological solutions. There are various examples of Government putting their toe in the water and trying to introduce market solutions by means of pump-priming, but the results have been disappointing. The clear skies initiative came to an end earlier this year, and has been replaced by a scheme that provides less funding for households to convert their energy sources to renewables such as solar. That is very disappointing, given all the rhetoric about what the Government are doing to encourage just that.
	The Minister is due to visit Church Stretton in my constituency next month to address a climate change symposium organised by the Methodists. I should like to invite him to come to see a scheme, funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, that involves the first operating anaerobic digester in the country, by means of which putrescible household and green waste is turned into electricity
	The scheme has been set up by South Shropshire district council, with full cross-party support from Liberal Democrat, Conservative and independent councillors. I am afraid that the council does not contain any Labour councillors, but I should like to show the Minister the facility in action. The Department has a pot of money to fund such projects that amounts to £30 million, and £2 million has been made available to support the initiative in my constituency. However, the disappointing thing is that it is the only one that is up and running, and my impression is that most of the money devoted to other initiatives across the country has been absorbed by legal fees, research and feasibility studies. I am sure that the Minister will be keen to see the project, given that there is very little else to show for all the work that has been done.
	Science has a big part to play in these matters. British companies are innovative and keen to take advantage of whatever pump-priming the Government are prepared to put in place. They are willing to meet the regulatory burdens placed on them in the search for alternative solutions, and that is why I was impressed to hear that my party is proposing a prize for innovation in the commercial development of wave technology. That is an example of the imagination needed to get such enterprises going.
	For example, we had a drought this summer. Why did no one suggest undertaking the commercial exploitation of desalination? The world needs more water, and I am not aware of a single commercial desalination plant that does not rely on subsidy. It is exactly the sort of project on which leading British universities can bring their expertise to bear in finding a practical solution.

Lynne Featherstone: I have received some 800 cards from members of Friends of the Earth in relation to the "big ask", and I am sure that other hon. Members will have received a similar number. I want to add the voice of Hornsey and Wood Green to the call for a climate change Bill. If one does not ask, one does not get—so I am asking.
	People around the country want to take responsibility in these matters. As we have heard today, that sense of personal responsibility goes hand in hand with the global need to address the threat to our world. Everyone in this Chamber is a committed environmentalist to some degree, and the question that we have to answer has to do with how we get that message across.
	Education and the dissemination of information are very important, and I am sure that the House will agree that Al Gore's film about climate change bridges the gap between what this House knows and what the man in the street is ready to take into his soul. Therefore, I hope that the Government will consider arranging for the film to be shown in secondary schools, as that would be intensely useful. Members will be delighted to know that I have tabled an early-day motion urging them all to support seeing the film. I even tried to word the motion so that Members could sign it only if they had seen the film, but unfortunately the rules of the House did not allow me to do so. It was a name-and-shame plot that did not work.
	Climate change issues are important at every level. Housing and energy are critical and my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell) made a good case for the implementation of his measure, the Sustainable and Secure Buildings Act 2004, sooner rather than later.
	I am worried about transport issues and very much liked the suggestion about speed limits made by the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith). It is a good idea and would be cheap to implement. The ease with which ordinary people can do things and the cheapness of proposals is important.
	I want briefly to speak about travel planning, which involves a lifestyle survey of an area to find out who could give up their car and what public transport is available. There is no chance of change for 30 per cent. of people, but others can make changes if they are given the right information and support. In Perth, in southern Australia, travel planning reduced congestion by 15 per cent., which is about the same reduction as under the congestion charge, but without even a penny of investment in infrastructure.
	Many people will not get on a bus because they do not know where it goes or where to change buses. Travel planning is a good thing, because it shows people what they can do. I championed it when I was chair of transport at the London assembly. Indeed, Transport for London has just sent me a travel planning survey form, so it has now arrived in Hornsey and Wood Green. We are okay in London, but many areas of the country could never undertake travel planning because they do not have the public transport infrastructure to develop it. There is a woeful need for investment in public transport.
	Even in London, where I have used public transport for six years, I was forced back into my car by the collapse of the Northern line last November and its ongoing problems thereafter. As I had to use my car I decided not to use planes, so I made some strange, but enjoyable, train journeys around Europe this summer. However, I had to catch a plane to go to Prague.
	Ordinary people have ordinary lives, and my experience shows that, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) said, we can carbon-offset our consciences if we have to use aeroplanes. We should think about disseminating those means and mechanisms to the ordinary folk. We must all do our bit. We do not have to wear hair shirts and never use our cars, but each of us needs to do a little and there are many ways to do it.
	The hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) was right in the structural point she made. If we are to have car sharing or car clubs, or when people have to charge an electrical car in the street, local authorities need to make things feasible and easy through planning regulations. They should not stand in the way of such innovations, as often seems to be the case.
	For all those reasons I am grateful to have had the opportunity to speak in the debate and I call on the Government to introduce a climate change Bill in the Queen's Speech.

Gregory Barker: Rather unexpectedly the name of Margaret Thatcher has been widely invoked across the Chamber during the debate.

Colin Challen: Not by me.

Gregory Barker: But at least twice on the Labour Benches.
	It is nearly 18 years since Margaret Thatcher alerted the world to the dangers of climate change, in a landmark address to the Royal Society. Since that groundbreaking speech, which called for action against global warming, and was reinforced by subsequent speeches to the United Nations, Britain has continued to play an international leadership role.
	I start by paying tribute to the current Prime Minister and successive Labour Environment Ministers for keeping the issue of climate change on the international agenda. Indeed, the appointment of the new Foreign Secretary, who has a record of commitment to tackling carbon dioxide emissions and a sound understanding of the issues, has undoubtedly further reinforced Britain's international reputation in the field. The new Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—wherever he is at the moment—clearly has a very real personal commitment.
	We may not have a written agreement, sadly, but there is a consensus in British politics about the need to tackle the causes of climate change. This afternoon's debate has demonstrated the breadth of concern right across the Chamber. Barely a week goes by now without yet more scientific studies reporting that climate change is not only happening, but increasing at a faster rate than previously anticipated and that the effects are being felt more widely and more acutely with every passing year.
	Since Margaret Thatcher made that famous speech at the end of the 1980s, we have witnessed a succession of the hottest years on record. In the past decade, we have seen not just a rise in global temperatures, but a catastrophic increase in extreme weather across the globe—whether shown by Hurricane Katrina in the northern hemisphere, the onset of previously unheard of hurricanes in the southern hemisphere, flooding in south-east Asia or the relentless onward march of drought and desertification across Africa. At the north and south poles, the icecaps continue to shrink at an alarming rate.
	We have gone beyond the point at which it is sufficient simply to alert the world to the dangers of climate change. We are now entering a crucial stage in the battle against global warming. We are now entering what leading scientific opinion calls the tipping point. In the most sensible part of the Secretary of State's opening speech, he quite rightly referred to the window of opportunity that we now have to stabilise carbon in the atmosphere at 450 to 550 parts per million, but that window will close.
	As several hon. Members have so clearly articulated this afternoon, unless we, the developed world, act decisively in the next few years significantly to reduce our carbon emissions, any future reduction may well be in vain because the carbon in the atmosphere will be sufficient to ensure the onset of the most extreme aspects of climate change. That is why this afternoon's debate is so important and why it is so vital that the Government turn more of their words into action.
	I do not doubt that the DEFRA Ministers are in earnest in their desire to tackle our nation's carbon emissions, but the fact is that we in the UK are still emitting more carbon in 2006 than we were in 1997. I applaud the Government's efforts to take a global leadership position on climate change, but that rings a little hollow when it is not matched by successful action at home. Taken in the round, and being honest, Labour's record on climate change has been good, but in the face of such an enormous challenge, it is simply not good enough. We must see far greater urgency and a willingness to take decisions now.
	The Conservative party, sadly, has the enforced luxury of opposition. Despite the turbulence on the Government Benches, sadly, we are not anticipating a general election anytime soon. So we Conservatives are taking time to study the problem carefully, to consult widely and to draw in Britain's greatest experts, as well as to look abroad for inspiration, so that we are prepared and ready to hit the ground running when we take over the reins of government. However, Ministers are the Government; they have a very real responsibility to act now. Already too much time has been wasted on endless iterative consultations and short-term initiatives, some of which have merit; but in total, they have failed to produce sufficient cuts in carbon emissions, which we so desperately need to achieve. Such a commitment must be shared right across the Government, not just in DEFRA.
	Personally, while speaking in the Committee that considered the Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Act 2006, I frequently saw a willingness to be progressive and ambitious in DEFRA or in the DTI, but I constantly saw that undermined by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister or the Treasury. Perhaps there would be less resistance right across Whitehall if Ministers heeded the remarks of the hon. Member for Morley and Rothwell (Colin Challen), not just his praise for Mrs. Thatcher, but his plea for a renewed effort for a genuine cross-party consensus on climate change.
	As my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) has said, tackling climate change is our social responsibility to the next generation; but, in politics, it is much easier to take the steps that will be painful if political parties work together, instead of just playing things for partisan advantage—and I am looking particularly at the Liberal Benches when I make those remarks. Therefore, although Conservative Members continue to hold the Government to account for their actions, or lack of action, with increasing vigour, we recognise that, with the politics of climate change, business as usual, as we understand it at Westminster, is not appropriate. Just as this House came together in the face of global terrorism, we need to come together with an equal degree of purpose to fight the greatest long-term challenge human kind faces this century.
	There have been a host of thoughtful, well-judged and provocative contributions from both sides of the House. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Joan Walley) contributed to the debate at the outset, demonstrating her knowledge and immense personal expertise. My hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd) made a thoughtful and well- informed contribution that demonstrated his expertise. He clearly stated that one does not have to be a fan of the euro, or want to sign up to a federal constitution, to see the need for an effective EU collective voice on the environment. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend, East (James Duddridge), who is a member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, spoke with great expertise about the impact of climate change on his constituency. The hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) was quite right to say that we can all take individual actions to make a difference.
	The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) spoke passionately about the importance of adaptation. Of course we can and must do more in that respect, but we must not lose our single most important focus on taking action now to avert the need to take adaptation measures later. My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt), in a short, but pithy speech, was quite right to say that there is no excuse for the Government not to bring in a climate change Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Dunne), in a speech in which he demonstrated great vision and ambition for further innovation, again impressed on the House the need for cross-party consensus. The hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone) came up with the excellent idea of showing Al Gore's film in every secondary school in the UK. I wholeheartedly agree.
	If this debate shows anything, it is not that the Government are moving in the wrong direction—there is much in the Government's programme that we support—but simply that they are not moving fast enough or with sufficient urgency. Where are the big actions to back the big thinking? They were certainly not mentioned in the energy review, which turned out to be a rather timid and unambitious document. Where are the steps to make decentralised energy a reality? Where are the steps to turn energy efficiency from a small-scale incremental programme into an urgent and demanding national roll-out? Where are the measures to reform the remit of Ofgem to focus more directly on carbon emissions and not just price? Where are the measures to reform the renewables obligation, to move the share of funding for renewables beyond just onshore wind and landfill methane gas to the whole universe of exciting emerging technologies?
	Where are the measures to deal responsibly with aviation? Where are the measures to allow progressive local councils, which can play a key role in reducing the carbon footprint of new UK housing and new-build commercial and industrial premises, to go faster and further in raising eco-standards than the Government are prepared to do nationally? Where are the measures to unleash in a truly meaningful way the green growth that we require to halt the brain drain of British talent and expertise in renewable technology—measures to underpin progressive business and stimulate new demand for sustainable technology? Where are the changes to stimulate green business opportunities and the measures to ensure that we are at the forefront of solutions to climate change, and do not just follow in the wake of our European partners?
	This debate has covered a great deal of ground and given the Minister a great deal to respond to, but at its heart is one clear message, which comes from Members on the Benches all around him and which comes loud and clear from the Conservatives: we need a climate change Bill in the Queen's Speech. We need a climate change Bill that will require Ministers to draw up plans to deliver the year-on-year cuts in CO2 emissions needed to prevent dangerous climate change; a climate change Bill that will require an annual report to Parliament on progress in meeting those targets; a climate change Bill that will keep emissions on track by requiring any Government falling behind the targets to improve policies and create new powers to monitor Ministers' progress; and a climate change Bill that would also be an opportunity to make any regulatory changes required to begin reducing carbon emissions. If the Government are prepared to bring forth such a measure in November, they will not buy our silence, but they will gain our active and genuine support.
	It is vital that we all face up to the threat of global warming with a sense of common purpose. However, we should continue to challenge each other across the Floor of the House to go further, faster and deeper in finding solutions to global warming. We are at the tipping point. Time is running out, but Conservative Members are optimistic that if we can find the will, time still remains to face down the challenge of climate change together.

Ian Pearson: This has been an important debate and it has been evident from the speeches made that there is a lot of common ground. The Government certainly want to go further, faster and deeper.
	The scientific evidence of climate change is overwhelming. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, the debate about global warming is over. The only real questions as far as I am concerned are how quickly it is happening and what are we going to do about it.
	The 10 warmest years in our history since records began have all occurred since 1990. In July, most parts of the UK experienced the hottest month that they had ever seen. Just last month was the warmest September in Birmingham since the 18th century. In 2003, the heat wave across Europe cost about 30,000 lives. The general consensus of scientific opinion is that if we do not tackle climate change, those temperatures will be the norm by 2050, and it might be the case that it will never get that cold during the summer by 2080.
	The latest assessment of the intergovernmental panel on climate change, which is in the process of being revised, predicts that the average rise in temperature from 1990 levels will be between 1.4 and 5.8° C by the end of this century. Even at the bottom of that range—round about 2° C—it is likely that 95 per cent. of the great barrier reef will disappear and that millions of people will suffer flooding, most of whom will be in the developing world. It is clear that there is an urgent need to tackle climate change.
	I welcome Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members' acknowledgement of the role of the Prime Minister and the Government in trying to lead international opinion on developing a post-Kyoto consensus on climate change. I accept that we have a moral responsibility to lead on the matter and we are doing just that. Last week in Monterrey, Mexico, we helped to take the debate forward. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made a major contribution there that followed on from our decision to put climate change at the top of our agenda during our presidencies of the G8 and the European Union. Key discussions took place at Monterrey.
	The Stern review, which will be published shortly, will clearly show that the costs of dealing with climate change will be far less than those of dealing with its consequences. The International Energy Agency, with its international energy perspectives, shows that the technologies exist and can be developed for the future. The World Bank is showing through its plans for an energy investment framework that, if we have the political will globally, we can provide funding to ensure that low-carbon technologies are adopted throughout the developing world, which will be crucial if we are to move towards a low-carbon world.

John Gummer: As lower-carbon technologies are available to deal with refrigeration and air conditioning, will the hon. Gentleman explain why the Government have allowed hydrofluorocarbon chillers to be put in the old Home Office and why they voted against the banning of HFCs in the European Union?

Ian Pearson: The right hon. Gentleman is very experienced in the ways of the House, and I am sure that he will find a way to ask that question directly of the Home Office. In July, we published new sustainable operational targets for the Government estate. We have said that we want the estate to be carbon-neutral by 2012—a major commitment—and we will press on with measures, including responding to the sustainable procurement taskforce, so that we lead the way in ensuring that public buildings become more carbon-neutral.

Colin Challen: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Ian Pearson: I was just about to refer to my hon. Friend as I returned to the subject of international climate change. My hon. Friend made a strong speech in which he emphasised the importance of the contraction and convergence model. The Government, too, are interested in that model. As he knows, there are a number of others around. What is clear is that, whatever model is chosen, we need to secure international agreement on a post-Kyoto international framework, so that other countries can make commitments and we have a long-term framework that is durable and fair to the developing world.

Colin Challen: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Ian Pearson: I am afraid not. If I do, I will not have time to respond to the many other comments made during the debate.
	This Government are one of the few currently on course to meet our Kyoto targets. In fact, we will almost double the reductions that we set through the Kyoto process. We have, with the climate change programme and the energy review, a range of policy measures that are setting us on a path towards reducing CO2 emissions by 60 per cent. by 2050. We need to do more, and I want to respond directly to a number of specific points made in the debate.
	First, on the question of a Bill, I am sure that the House will not expect me to divulge what is or is not in the Queen's Speech, but I can say that we are examining carefully the case for a statutory framework. We are having discussions about that and we are well aware of the strength of feeling of hon. Members and many of their constituents who have written to them on these issues.
	The hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) referred to the climate change levy and agreements. I know that he and his party are not in favour of the levy, but by the end of last year that measure had saved 16.5 million tonnes of carbon and it will go on to save approximately 3.5 million tonnes a year. It is an important part of tackling emissions.
	In an important contribution, my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping) mentioned clean coal and the importance of carbon capture and storage as a future technology. The International Energy Agency has highlighted that, and I think that it is key to the future. It will be vital for countries such as China and the United States, which will continue to burn fossil fuels. Making sure that they do that in a carbon-neutral way is crucial.
	The shadow junior environment Minister said from a sedentary position that he thought the renewables obligation a waste of money. That is emphatically not the case. It has enabled us to take a great leap forward in renewable electricity generation, which has almost trebled since it was introduced. There are 16 GW of applications in process, with a further 11,500 MW in the planning system. If we reach our targets, that will equate to about 2.5 million tonnes of carbon a year. That is another example of the Government being serious and introducing policy initiatives that will make a difference in reducing our CO2 emissions.

Gregory Barker: We have not said that the renewables obligation is a complete failure, but we are strongly critical of the fact that the largest beneficiary of the RO, which is paid for out of every single electricity user's bill, is not some innovative new technology, but landfill methane gas. The second largest beneficiary is onshore wind—a technology that, in Germany, is managed without any subsidy at all. A host of other technologies in their early stages are being starved of funding.

Ian Pearson: I am concerned about that intervention, because it does not show a commitment to the renewables obligation, or even a reformed version. In fact, it questions its basic existence, and that is not an acceptable or responsible policy position.
	Adaptation was the subject of a typically powerful contribution by my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris). I often discuss adaptation. In fact, I went to Kew gardens to speak about it, and about the fact that the English lawn is under threat as a result of climate change. He mentioned the UK climate impacts programme, which is an important initiative, and the adaptation policy framework that the Government are developing. We must adapt that framework more quickly. I agree that we need to do more research, although we are doing a great deal of research into the impacts of climate change and how we can adapt to it.
	The role of local government in helping to reduce our carbon footprint has not been mentioned at all today. As some hon. Members will be aware, more than 150 local authorities have signed the Nottingham declaration, and are taking action on both mitigation and adaptation. My hon. Friend might like to look at the website, which includes a range of measures that can be undertaken on adaptation. That is an important contribution, but we need to do more.
	Flood defence, as well as sustainable urban drainage, which has not been mentioned today, are important. Sustainable drainage and more effective land management are part of the innovative solutions that we need to develop as part of an adaptation framework. I accept that flood defence and flood risk management are vital for the future. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, we have not cut the capital budget in the floods programme. I stress that we are spending 35 per cent. more in real terms on flood risk management than we were in 1996-97, and I have no doubt that that we will need to spend more in future. However, it is important to recognise the progress that we have made.
	The hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd) mentioned deforestation. I agree that that is an important subject, albeit complex and difficult. There are some methodological problems, but the Government think that a market-based approach such as conservation credits is more likely to deliver. Turning to the built environment, may I remind the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell) that we improved part L of the building regulations in 2002, 2005 and 2006? Homes are now 40 per cent. more energy efficient than they were just four years ago, but we have to do more, and we must progressively tighten up the regulations. The new planning policy statement on climate change that we want to introduce will be important in ensuring that we do more on the subject of the built environment.
	Lastly, on recycling, we announced today that our annual targets had been met. The hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) mentioned recycling, which has nearly quadrupled since 1997. However, we need to double that rate—again, that is another area in which we need to do more.
	Tomorrow's climate is today's challenge for Governments, the business community and each of us as individuals, because we are all in it together. We must work across boundaries—geographical, social and political—to secure an international agreement on a future framework to stabilise CO2 emissions which is robust and fair to developing countries.
	 It being Six o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

PETITION

Conquest Hospital, Hastings

Michael Jabez Foster: Shortly before the summer recess I presented a petition with 20,000 names concerning the Conquest hospital in Hastings, since when 7,000 people have marched the streets of Hastings and 20,000 more have signed a further petition, including many from the constituency of the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), whom I am pleased to see in the Chamber.
	The petition of John Baker, the chairman of the Friends of the Conquest, and others
	Declares that the residents of Hastings and Rother, in the sixtieth year of the NHS, appreciate the services delivered at the local Conquest Hospital.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to direct Health Authorities to ensure that any reorganisations will not involve the downgrading of existing services at the Conquest Hospital or in any way compromise the Accident and Emergency Service now provided.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	 To lie upon the Table.

NEONATAL CARE

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. —[Liz Blackman.]

Sadiq Khan: I am grateful for the opportunity to highlight the important issues surrounding neonatal care. There may not be as many speakers in this debate as there were in the preceding one, and it may not go on as long, but I hope the response from the Minister on the Treasury Bench will be as positive as that given to the preceding debate.
	BLISS, which is funded almost entirely through donations and grants, is the leading national charity focusing on neonatal care and has been established for more than 25 years. I appreciate the support that the charity has provided to me in making me aware of the amazing work that goes on in neonatal care, as well as some of the challenges. I understand that my hon. Friend the Minister will be presenting an award at the inaugural BLISS ceremony on 24 October, which confirms the Government's respect for BLISS.
	One in eight babies born in the UK require neonatal care, which represents 80,000 children, 17,000 of whom will require intensive care. About 11,000 babies in London each year need the extra care provided in neonatal units. The majority of the babies in neonatal units are there because they were born prematurely. However, there is a diverse range of other causes. For example, a child born with an infection might require antibiotics, some children need help to breathe via a ventilator, and other children with a serious case of jaundice may need to kept under observation in a neonatal unit.
	The strides taken forward in the past two decades are there for us all to see. In the mid-1980s only one in five babies weighing less than 1 kg at birth could survive. That proportion has increased rapidly and stands at four in five babies. The fact that four in five babies now survive, compared with one in five in the 1980s, is testament not only to the technological advances achieved in this period, but to the tireless efforts of doctors and nurses who, as I am sure hon. Members on both sides of the House will agree, can never receive too much praise.
	The number of babies born prematurely has also increased significantly in recent years. A number of social factors have contributed to the escalating numbers of premature births. The increased prevalence of fertility treatment has resulted in a corresponding rise in multiple births, which are more likely to result in premature labour. When women have children later in life there is an increased prospect of obstetric complications, particularly if mothers are over 40 years of age at the time of giving birth. Babies born as a result of teenage pregnancy are also at high risk of being born premature and/or at a low birth-weight. Unfortunately, the UK still has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in western Europe. Mothers from ethnic minority backgrounds are more likely to give birth to a baby with a low birth weight.
	The need for effective neonatal care is becoming ever more apparent and growing. However, the capacity of neonatal services is not sufficient to cope with the current demand, let alone future needs. I welcomed the Government's additional targeted funding of £72 million between 2003 and 2006, which among other benefits helped to establish five neonatal networks across London, a neonatal transfer service to transport babies to an alternative hospital when necessary, and an increase in capacity.
	The Greater London authority report, "Counting the Cots", which was published in May this year, also highlighted the point that the number of neonatal cots in London has increased by 12 per cent. in the past four years. London has 77 more neonatal cots in 2006 than it had in 2002. The report concluded that
	"neonatal care services are generally working well",
	for which the Government deserve huge praise.
	Notwithstanding that encouraging progress, I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister recognises the urgent need to go even further. In July this year, I visited the neonatal unit at St. George's hospital in my constituency for the second time in recent months. The visit provided me with the opportunity to meet the parents of premature babies and the staff, who make an invaluable contribution. Visiting a neonatal unit is a reminder of how our NHS does a fantastic job giving hope and joy to the parents of those tiny miracles. Premature babies are some of the most vulnerable patients, and they are looked after by skilled, specialist caring staff, who also provide tremendous support to understandably distressed parents.
	St. George's hospital plays an integral role in the provision of neonatal care in south-west London. The Department of Health review, which was published in April 2003, recommended that neonatal care should be reconstructed into clinical networks with units divided into three levels depending on the level of care that the hospital can provide. First, there are intensive care units, where one nurse looks after one baby. Those units are necessary for babies with particularly complicated medical needs. Secondly, there are high-dependency units, where a nurse should be responsible for no more than two babies. Those units are necessary for babies weighing less than 1 kg who do not need intensive care, but who still require treatment, such as intravenous feeding. Finally, there are special care units, where a nurse should not have responsibility for more than four babies. Those units are necessary for babies who require regular monitoring.
	The system ensures that each region has at least one hospital that can offer so-called level 3 intensive care support for the mothers of premature or ill babies. I am pleased that the hospital in my constituency where my two daughters were born not so long ago—I was also born there slightly longer ago—offers the most advanced neonatal care in south-west London. The Government recommend that 95 per cent. of premature babies should be cared for within their local network, but too many mothers still have to travel hundreds of miles to obtain the appropriate level of neonatal care.
	More than 90 per cent. of units were compelled to transfer patients last year because of lack of capacity. The neonatal units at St. George's hospital accepted transfer cases from areas such as Brighton, Farnborough, Southampton and Wrexham Park, which is near Slough. While I accept that a system of networks is the most effective method of supporting parents, we cannot escape the fact that there needs to be an increase in the number of specialist nurses, cots and dedicated transport services to alleviate those concerns. In that regard, many hon. Members hope that the Minister's excellent relationship with the Treasury, as a result of his previous ministerial experience, will enable him successfully to lobby the Treasury in the 2007 spending review for an even greater prioritisation of funding to health services for sick and premature babies.
	The British Association of Perinatal Medicine believes that the average occupancy of neonatal units should be 70 per cent. to ensure that capacity is available in unforeseen circumstances. Recent research undertaken by BLISS highlighted that 78 per cent. of units nationwide have been forced to close to new admissions as a result of insufficient capacity. Furthermore, St. George's hospital has an average occupancy rate of 91 per cent. of its cots. In 2005, it had to turn away 518 babies because of the lack of staffed cots. In fact, the unit had to be closed to new admissions as recently as 3 October, which is one of 71 days in the past six months in which that situation arose. More alarmingly, I have been advised that St. George's is currently 27 nurses short of the standard set by the BAPM, if it is to achieve the level 3 target of one nurse caring for no more than one child.
	I realise that resources in the NHS are finite, but it is clear that the lack of national nursing standards and of a national focus mean that local trusts and PCTs are not giving neonatal units the funding that they require. When difficult choices about the allocation of resources need to be made, neonatal units suffer. Research from BLISS found that only 3 per cent. of units in the UK can provide one-to-one nursing for premature babies in intensive care. It estimates the nursing shortfall to be about 2,700, including 540 in London alone. Moreover, a third of the most highly qualified neonatal nurses currently employed in hospitals will retire within the next three years.
	Health professionals and specialists were keen to stress to me that the recruitment and retention of doctors in neonatal units has markedly improved under this Government. However, there is a problem with regard to suitably qualified and experienced neonatal nurses. One of the main reasons for that is the uncertainty generated by the lack of national guidance and primary care trusts not funding staff at the appropriate levels. I hope that my hon. Friend is in a position to reassure the House that the Government are listening to those concerns and will urgently investigate them.
	Many of the health professionals to whom I spoke welcome the Government's proposed reforms in neonatal health care. Nevertheless, they have stressed the need for improved delivery mechanisms within neonatal care. There is a particular problem with a commissioning system that appears disjointed. Neonatal intensive care is deemed to be a "specialist service" and is therefore commissioned by a number of PCTs sharing the investment and associated risk of commissioning funding to this important area. In contrast, level 1 neonatal care is commissioned by the relevant PCTs individually.
	Another problem that the specialists identified is that of insufficient inducements provided by the Department of Health for PCTs to ring-fence the necessary funding for neonatal care, which is compounded by the lack of national standards that I mentioned. I ask my hon. Friend for his help in persuading PCTs of the fundamental importance of neonatal care and dissuading them from reducing the level of service provision in this area. At the same time, I ask him urgently to look into improving the commissioning of neonatal care and the allocation of future funding. One of the things that we have been very good at is starting to involve patient representation and parental involvement within neonatal care. There are now several user involvement projects that recruit, train, and then support parents who wish to become board members for neonatal networks as user representatives. Parents need to be more involved with the commissioning of local community services. I am sure that any support that the Department of Health can provide in this area will reap benefits for all users.
	As hon. Members will know, the Healthcare Commission has a statutory duty to evaluate the performance of healthcare organisations. Unfortunately, it still has not conducted an investigation into neonatal care. Maternity and paediatric services have been thoroughly investigated by the commission, and improvements made as a consequence, but that is not the case with neonatal care. I understand that an audit of neonatal services has just been commissioned and is currently being undertaken by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. However, an audit that merely monitors such variables as transfers and occupancy rates is insufficient and does not compensate for the lack of an investigation. I hope that my hon. Friend will provide the House with a commitment that he will look into the Healthcare Commission's embarking on an examination into neonatal care in the near future.
	The national health service has made significant progress since 1997, with waiting lists and waiting times down significantly. Record numbers of patients are being treated, with record numbers of lives being saved. Neonatal care has also made huge strides, but there is concern among parents, staff and professionals that more can and must be done in this vital area. I am therefore pleased that I have had the opportunity to highlight these issues in the House. I am grateful for the attention of my hon. Friend the Minister and very much look forward to his response.

Ivan Lewis: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Mr. Khan) on securing the debate. He spoke passionately and eloquently about a subject that is massively important to many people, although that is not reflected by the turnout in the Chamber. I am delighted to see the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) in his place, and I will give him the opportunity to intervene in a few moments.
	I echo my hon. Friend's comments about the contribution of BLISS, and I look forward to presenting the award that he mentioned. The organisation has made a tremendous difference and we should pay tribute to its exceptional work.
	Neonatal services provide high quality care for some of the most vulnerable babies in our society. It is a credit to the skill and dedication of all those working in neonatal care and other services for babies that perinatal, neonatal and infant mortality rates for England and Wales are the lowest recorded.
	The Government want most care for pregnant and newly delivered mothers and their babies to be provided as close to their homes as possible and, when possible, in a setting of their and their partners' choice.

Michael Penning: I thank the Minister for his generosity. I, too, pay tribute to the work of BLISS, which is a fantastic organisation. The hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Khan) has done well to mention its work in the House this evening.
	If care is contracted to specialist units, it moves increasingly further from where the mums and dads live. Many parents travel a long distance to see their babies in special care units. I would have expected parents from my constituency to have to travel to London to the excellent units there, but some have ended up in Yarmouth or Nottingham. That causes parents grave concern, at a time when anxiety is already high. Is there any way that we can reconsider the configurations so that parents do not have to travel so far?

Ivan Lewis: The hon. Gentleman makes an important, valid point. We must be sensitive. Anyone who knows people who have been through trauma and concern at such a stage in a baby's life realises how horrendously stressful it is for parents and the wider family. The difficulty is the concept of determining local configuration nationally. It becomes a contradictory position in the context of independence for operational decisions in the health service, which is the Conservative party's new policy. However, I do not want to bring politics into the discussion.
	A genuine problem is that at some times in the system, there are pressures on beds that do not occur throughout the year. In some periods there are many empty beds, which means that there is no problem with people getting the sort of care that they need closer to home. Unfortunately, at other times beds are full, and that presents major problems for the system and the affected families.

Michael Penning: No easy answers.

Ivan Lewis: Indeed. However, we must be sensitive and I urge all those who make the decisions to be aware that such a situation is difficult for any family, and to take account of that when they decide about the location, quality and nature of the health care available.
	There will be occasions when transfer to a more specialist unit may offer better outcomes. Sometimes the sort of medical and other expertise available means that it would be better, in terms of reassurance and saving lives, for the babies and the parents to go further away from home than would normally be desirable. However, transferring a mother or baby must be done in a planned, informed way and for the best clinical reasons.
	Several challenges need to be addressed. My hon. Friend the Member for Tooting referred to some of them. Happily, the increased capability of technology and the development of health care expertise has led to more very premature or very low birth weight babies being born alive and surviving. Such babies require prolonged periods of intensive supportive care, often over several weeks. It is important that there is enough capacity in the national health service to meet that demand.
	The Department established an expert review group on neonatal intensive care to provide advice on the most effective ways of caring for very sick or very premature newborn babies. It considered the views of professionals and parents whose babies had received care from the service. The review group published its findings in 2003. It suggested a more structured, collaborative approach to caring for newborn babies, and proposed that hospitals work closely together in formal, managed networks to provide the safest and most effective service for mothers and babies. That would include the designation of some hospitals specially equipped to care for the sickest and smallest babies, with other hospitals providing high dependency care and shorter periods of intensive care as close to home as possible. Subsequent to that report, we have been supporting the specialised services commissioners for neonatal intensive care as they work with the NHS locally to facilitate the development of neonatal managed clinical networks. Such networks are incredibly important.
	It is also important to say—this is linked to a point that I made to the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead—that it was not central Government that dictated the nature of these local networks, their structures or which localities they ought to cover. We have said that the system needs to create the networks, but that it is for people at local level to determine the most appropriate configurations and partnership arrangements. As a consequence of that, 24 networks have now been established across England. It is fair to say that some have developed faster than others. That is to be expected, as it takes time to develop them and to ensure that the right structures are in place.
	We have put additional funding into the system. More than £70 million has been made available to support the implementation of the report since 2003. That was divided into £20 million for capital expenditure and £12 million for running costs in 2003-04, with the additional money for running costs increasing to £19 million in 2004-05 and to £20 million in 2005-06. That is now in primary care trusts' baseline budgets. That funding is in addition to the general increase in NHS funding, from which neonatal services can of course also benefit.
	We recognise the importance of ensuring that capacity in neonatal intensive care is available at all times, and that there is still sufficient flexibility in the service to meet unforeseen demand. Weekly situation reports indicate a national average neonatal intensive care cot occupancy of about 75 per cent. That reinforces the point that at any one time, 25 per cent. of the national capacity is not being used. However, that does not always reflect what is happening in individual localities. In that respect, noting the finding of BLISS that over 90 per cent. of units had to transfer patients last year, it is important to recognise that there are genuine issues that we have to address. There are also various reasons why a unit might close to new admissions for a time—a sudden outbreak of an infection, or a sudden problem with staff availability. That can lead to the temporary closure of units, and can cause babies to have to go further away from home than we would want.
	The development of the networks has made a difference. The match between supply and demand is getting better, and there is the full range of special care, high dependency and intensive care in most localities. The networks are only beginning to get to grips with case load and case mix, and with securing the right level of care in that context. Their objective is to provide over 90 per cent. of neonatal care locally. However, in some situations that might not be possible or desirable.
	The Department has also funded the development of the neonatal intensive care unit capacity planning tool to assist in making decisions about the configuration of neonatal intensive care units within a region. Those decisions include the location of neonatal intensive care units, the number of cots, staffing levels, and the levels of intensive care each unit provides. The tool also allows consideration of different hospitals operating together in networks, thus sharing the workloads between hospitals.

Sadiq Khan: Can my hon. Friend explain the inconsistency between a tool giving guidance on staff numbers and the fact that the BAPM guideline on, for example, one nurse per high dependency cot is not met if PCTs do not fund the staff?

Ivan Lewis: My hon. Friend makes a reasonable point, but it is difficult to say, "We issue guidance and we identify priorities," but then add, "We instruct PCTs to deliver in every area in a particular way." That would take away the capacity to make flexible innovative local decisions.
	One of the difficulties in this respect is that the definition of one-to-one support is not always clear. There can be ambiguity about what that might mean in any given set of circumstances. Does it mean support 24 hours a day? Does it mean having one named person who is clearly responsible for care and is available all the time, but who may not be physically present all the time?
	So there are different definitions, but we also have to be honest and point out that PCTs are constantly making choices about priorities in the light of finite resources. In some areas that will be reflected in staffing levels that BLISS would regard as acceptable and desirable, but in others, although I believe that staffing levels always meet minimum safety standards, they do not necessarily meet the high standards that appear in the guidance. So on these occasions, it is important that we be frank about the consequences of finite resources and local management decisions, because we cannot avoid them. At the same time, it is also right that we constantly try to stretch the system to do better, and to ensure that such families are properly supported, not just through health interventions but from an emotional point of view as well. We all accept that that is very important.
	It is worth focusing for a moment on a linked issue—the availability of nurses. As at September 2005, 19,178 paediatric nurses were employed in the NHS in total. That figure includes neonatal nurses and other nurses involved in the care of children, and represents an increase of 25 per cent. since 1997—to pick a random date. The annual number of students entering training to be children's nurses increased by 59 per cent. between 1996-97 and 2004-05. The national vacancy rate for paediatric nurses has fallen from 4.4 per cent. in 2000 to 1.7 per cent. in 2005. Interestingly, that compares with a vacancy rate of 1.9 per cent. for all qualified nurses. So the message is that there has been a lot of progress, and a lot of positive developments and steps forward, but there is still a long way to go. We should be honest about that, and be clear about the challenges ahead.
	Another challenge, to which my hon. Friend referred, is commissioning. Specialised services—defined as services with a planning population of more than 1 million—are those with low patient numbers, which need a critical mass of patients to make treatment centres clinically safe and cost-effective. Under this definition, level 2 and level 3 care are defined as specialised services. Level 1 care is not a specialised service and is generally provided as part of each maternity service. At the moment there are no plans to redefine level 1 as a specialised service—an issue to which my hon. Friend referred.
	There are currently no tariffs for neonatal intensive care. Critical care is outside the scope of payment by results, and funding for the service continues to be locally negotiated between commissioners and providers. Health care resource groups, which are the underlying currency for tariffs, are being developed for neonatal critical care by the NHS information centre.
	Given the sensitivity of this issue, it is very important that in developing services we also consider how we relate to parents as user representatives; it is important that they have a strong voice in such development. A review group has recommended that in future, each network should have a supervisory structure that includes key stakeholders in the provision of care. Those stakeholders should include representatives of parents, providers and commissioners. So we do envisage governance arrangements that will ensure that the voice of users is extremely strong as we re-engineer and reshape services.
	For maternity services more generally, a comprehensive service review is scheduled to take place next year, partly as a result of four recent investigation reports. My hon. Friend is correct to say that the Healthcare Commission has recently contracted the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health to run a general clinical audit of neonatal care. I congratulate my hon. Friend again on raising these important issues in the House today.

Sadiq Khan: Before my hon. Friend finishes speaking, may I point out that the one question that he has not dealt with is his special relationship with the Treasury, and how much more money he will be able to lever into this important area?

Ivan Lewis: If I want to continue to enjoy a special relationship with the Chancellor and the Treasury, I should not refer to any financial decisions. I shall simply say that this is a matter for the comprehensive spending review. That is a very boring answer, but it is very wise one from a career point of view.
	We have made a great deal of progress, and parents can feel reassured. However, there are many challenges ahead, and we need to work with organisations such as BLISS and the representatives of other stakeholders to ensure that we get our interventions right. In the way in which we treat parents and babies in those incredibly challenging circumstances, there is nothing more important than that.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at half-past Six o'clock.